Fairytale, 2

So... The International Tribunal. Officially called the ECCC - Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia, this court has been years in the making. The international community and many Cambodian citizens have been trying to arrest, charge, and try KR officials since the regime fell in 1979. The head honcho, Pol Pot, died before any legal action could be taken.

Initially the public was supposed to apply for passes/clearance to visit the court, so we went on Tuesday after we taught English over the lunch hour, with no expectation of actually getting in to the building or compound. As we arrived the trial chamber was going on a 20 or 30 minute break, and Ajaan John asked if we could go in when the court restarted - AND THEY SAID YES! We were so excited. And a mite uncomfortable, because we were dressed for Cambodian heat and bumming around... not actually sitting in the trial chamber. I definitely went to the ECCC in a peasant skirt and beater-style tank top... :/ Jenna had to borrow Catherine's scarf to get in, because they wouldn't allow in shorts. Maybe we should have dreamed a little bigger.

All embarrassment aside, this was an amazing experience. We were witnessing the first day of trial proceedings in the first case to make it all the way to trial at the ECCC. Whoa.

(Before each case actually makes it to trial, there is a pre-trial period where the judges, defense, prosecution, and civil party attorneys attempt to hash out all of the nitty gritty rules and procedures for the actual trial. Some things are the same as trial - the defense likes to question the detention of the accused in both chambers, and the civil party attorneys don't really get to do anything ever being two examples - but the pre-trial is where Cambodian and international law get smushed together and a procedure and rules are agreed upon, and trial is where things really get adversarial and guilt needs to be proven and sentences handed down. Of the five cases currently active at the ECCC, four are in the pre-trial stage and one - the one we saw - has proceeded to trial chambers.)

The case before the trial chamber currently is prosecuting Kaing Guek Eav, or Duch (pronounced Doy-ik, we think) the man who ran Tuol Sleng/S-21 Prison during the Khmer Rouge. On Tuesday we missed the first Prosecution and Defense opening statements (they each gave 2) and we just missed Duch addressing the court, coming in as the second Defense attorney gave his opening statement. After the opening statements finished, the trial for the day ended with discussion of some logistical problems that had crept up along with some civil party attorney discontent being expressed due to their lack of opening statement.

We decided to go back to take in a full day of court in small groups. I was drawn for the second day of Duch's trial on Wednesday. We arrived at the ECCC at about 8:45 on Wednesday morning excited to hear the outcome of some of the previous day's debates, since the Justices wanted the time to confer, and to see what would happen next. In summary, the Court denied the Civil Parties' request for opening statements and requested that the Defense put forth the challenges they had alluded to the day before in their first opening statement. At first they didn't want to and tried to write everything off as a misunderstanding, but when asked a second time, the attorneys finally spit out their request to have the court release Duch to house arrest, since he had been in jail for 10 years - 2 years without being charged with anything, 7.5 in the custody of the Cambodian Military, and the final 2.5 in the custody of the ECCC (the .5s are approximate). There is apparently a Cambodian statute that says people charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes or related charges cannot be held for longer than three years, that supplied the basis of the Defense's request. The Prosecution countered, but didn't really put forward overly convincing arguments (at least, not as convincing as the defense was, in my view). One of the Civil Party attorneys made the best argument for retaining custody of Duch. She said that the ECCC has until July before their three years of custody are up, so this is a non-issue that should maybe be discussed in July, if ever. She is one smart lawyer lady. And she had badass hair. The justices decided to break for lunch and conferencing.

After lunch, the Justices came back and said they were gonna take the weekend to discuss release, but that they had decided the next order of business should be to read into the court record the "agreed upon facts" from the indictment. Basically, what happened was the pre-trial chamber came up with this indictment, listing the crimes Duch committed. The Prosecution then broke the indictment down into individual pieces of factual evidence and submitted these to both the court and to the Defense. The Defense was then supposed to go through the facts and designate whether they "agreed" with a fact, "agreed in part", "disagreed" or "did not contest" the fact. The facts that are agreed to or not contested are then considered not up for debate or discussion during the trial; that part of the indictment is fact, true. The Justices, on the recommendation of the Civil Parties, decided that it would be best for everyone's understanding of the case and proceedings if the agreed or not contested facts be read aloud. In the first of three parts, there were some 240 agreed or not contested facts that the prosecutor read aloud in the trial chamber. They ranged from the location of S-21 and M-13 (another prison Duch ran for a time), to the number of prisoners held and killed at S-21, to the methods of torture and the genesis of torture training manuals (:Duch. He produced three volumes of torture techniques and rules of interrogation for the prison... oy). I started the reading trying to write down each fact. About 60 in I switched to writing numbers to keep track of the total and jotting down the facts I found particularly compelling. At 200, I quit writing all together and just marked tallies. I have a full page and a half or two pages of notes that are almost entirely number sequences. I felt a little dazed by the time we left the courtroom, especially when I remembered there were still 100 or so facts to be read from the second section of the indictment (the defense had chosen to not respond to the third part, since it spoke about Duch's character or personality or something, and they felt it resembled self-incrimination, so they didn't look at those facts).

The next day Nathan, Patricia and Catherine went to the court, while the rest of us bummed and taught English. Thursday was part of the pre-trial chamber proceedings for Ieng Sary, the foreign minister for the KR. The man who tricked the entire world to allowing them to hold and keep their UN seat while committing crimes against humanity, if not genocide, even after they had been forced from power. He makes my blood boil. On the docket for Thursday was an appeal put forward by the Defense, requesting that Ieng Sary be released from jail due to poor health, if not cancelling his trial completely, since he was suffering from "near fatal old age" or something like that. The appeal was (obviously) shot down, but according to N, P, and C, the whole lot of that court (minus perhaps the Prosecutor) made themselves look like a complete joke before the justices gave their decision. The attorney's arguing skills were apparently far below those of Duch's trial chamber. Sary also liked to make the justices angry by moving to sit with his attorneys, without permission, instead of his assigned place in the middle of the room, which is just a hilarious image in my head, especially since he's too feeble to "run across the border to Thailand" (a direct quote from the defense) due to the fact that he's suffering "terminal old age" (a summary of the defense). Ridiculous.

I need to peace out for the day, before I spend all of my baht on internet. Yeah, that's right! We're back in Thailand! Woo!

Oh - and here are some links if you are looking for more info on the ECCC and the trials:
ECCC Website
Phnom Penh Post - Enlish-language daily newspaper
and... Supposedly the Cambodia Daily has a website... somewhere on the web. But I can't find it. It's another English-language newspaper and I had lunch with three of their reporters on Wednesday.