The war crimes court in Cambodia has announced that the trial of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge will start on November 21. The move comes as the United Nations senior legal counsel arrives in Phnom Penh after a judge quit citing political interference.

The announcement that next month will see the start of Case Two - as the trial of the elderly leaders of the Khmer Rouge is known in court parlance - is a rare piece of good news for the United Nations-backed tribunal. On Tuesday the court revealed it would hear opening statements on November 21, with evidence scheduled for presentation from November 28.

Tribunal spokesman Lars Olsen said it was the moment for which the Cambodian people had been waiting. "This is the case of those who are accused of being the leaders and of implementing the policies that allegedly led to the crimes for which they are being tried," he said.

Genocide and crimes against humanity

The four defendants in Case 002 are charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for their alleged roles in the deaths of up to 2.2 million people during the Khmer Rouge's rule of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. They deny all charges.

One key concern that the start date will not alleviate is the health of the defendants. The youngest is 79, and there are fears one or more could die before the end of a lengthy trial. The former social affairs minister, Ieng Thirith, is believed to have Alzheimer's disease and could yet be ruled unfit for trial. And Brother Number Two Nuon Chea, 85, who is considered the movement's chief ideologue, says he is unable to concentrate or sit for a full day. The other defendants are: Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, who said earlier this year that he was in relatively good health; and Ieng Sary, the ex-foreign minister, who is struggling with a number of ailments.

With health issues uppermost, the court - which has described this case as the most complex since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg - last month separated the complex array of charges. That decision will allow judges to hand down verdicts as the case proceeds in what will effectively amount to a series of smaller trials.

The first of those trials will deal with two forced transfers of the population, which is considered a crime against humanity and which the tribunal says "affected virtually all victims of the Democratic Kampuchea regime." The first transfer took place in April 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power and emptied the cities. Later that year, hundreds of thousands were forcibly moved to labour camps in other parts of the country. Tens of thousands of people are thought to have died during the second transfer. "The underlying purpose of this unlawful forced transfer was to subject people to unlawful forced labour," prosecutors wrote in their final submission.

Last month the prosecution appealed the way the court had separated the charges, arguing that the first trial should be more representative of the vast sweep of crimes with which the defendants are accused. But in a related announcement on Tuesday the tribunal rejected that appeal in part because considering it would have pushed the start of Case 002 into next year, but also because it had not excluded "the possibility of adding additional charges or counts to the first trial in Case 002 where circumstances permit."

Senior UN legal counsel in Pnomh Penh

The news that Case 002 will soon begin comes as the senior UN legal counsel, Patricia O'Brien, who heads the Office of Legal Affairs in New York, arrived in Phnom Penh for three days of meetings with government, donors and tribunal staff after months of crisis.

Her visit comes on the heels of a turbulent year for the tribunal with allegations of political interference by Phnom Penh and judicial misconduct accusations levelled against the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges (OCIJ). It also follows last week's resignation of one of the OCIJ judges, German national Siegfried Blunk. He quit saying public statements by Cambodian ministers could be perceived as political interference in Cases 003 and 004.

Each of the five defendants in Cases 003 and 004 - which will in theory be the tribunal's last - is accused of tens of thousands of deaths. However Phnom Penh has long said it would not permit either case to go to trial at the hybrid court, in which Cambodians and international staff hold equivalent positions.

O'Brien told media this week she would discuss the issue of political interference as well as other aspects of the court's work, a likely reference to the actions of the OCIJ. HRW also said the UN must investigate "numerous credible allegations of judicial misconduct" by the two investigating judges or risk destroying the tribunal's credibility. As yet it is unclear whether the UN will act, despite mounting pressure from all sides for a thorough and impartial investigation.

Author: Robert Carmichael
Editor: Grahame Lucas