Robert Carmichael, VOA | Phnom Penh
“Mr. Ieng Sary has abided by all of the conditions of the amnesty, and the amnesty itself as I have indicated brought fruit.”
The U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal continued its hearings into the four surviving leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge movement. Arguments revolved around a controversial amnesty granted in 1996 to the movement’s former foreign minister.
In 1996 Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary defected to the Cambodian government after receiving a royal pardon and amnesty.
With him came several-thousand Khmer Rouge soldiers, in a move that pre-empted the collapse of the ultra-Maoist movement that brought so much destruction to Cambodia.
It was a shrewd decision by Ieng Sary, the political realignment at the end of the Cold War meant the days of the Khmer Rouge were numbered.
During the current U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal, Ieng Sary’s defense lawyers said his amnesty should stand and he should not be on trial at all.
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