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In-Depth Information
Nicoletti later confirmed that his team had gathered “substantial” though incomplete
evidence pointing to the involvement of the CPP's security apparatus in the grenade at-
Nicoletti all told similar stories about Hun Sen's bodyguard soldiers, their deployment,
and the fact that assailants were allowed to escape into the nearby military compound.
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But the results were never publicly released. When the FBI reported to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in November 1998, as it was required to do by law, it assigned no
ive allegations were whited out of the FBI's report after consultation with the Justice De-
allies cried foul, but the FBI was not forthcoming. In 2005 the case was quietly closed.
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Im Malen, meanwhile, never walked again. Now a withered 71-year-old with short-
cropped sliver hair, she moves about in a wheelchair donated by a Christian NGO. Lack-
ing an income of her own, Malen has been forced to survive on the charity of family and
neighbors and a small monthly pension from Sam Rainsy's party. Each year, like many
others, she attends the annual ceremony commemorating those who died in the grenade
attack, which transformed a call for impartial courts into a symbol of Cambodian in-
justice. “We didn't have any arms,” she said. “We just came with paper banners.”
The grenade attack marked a steep deterioration in the political situation. By the middle
of 1997, Tony Kevin recalled, Phnom Penh “was on a hair-trigger, just waiting for
something to set it off.” Senior officials from both parties traveled through the city
with motorcycle outriders armed with AK-47s and rocket launchers. Their homes were
watched around the clock by armed guards, who eyed passers-by warily from machine-
gun nests and barricades of sandbags. The government had virtually ceased to function,
as the two premiers plotted out chess moves inside fortified compounds.
The final end-game revolved around the unfolding drama in Anlong Veng. After Ieng
Sary's defection, the remaining Khmer Rouge were still divided over whether to keep
up the fight or to seek accommodation with the government. The allegiance of those al-
legedly wishing to defect now became the subject of a new political courtship. In the
meantime, Hun Sen redoubled his attacks on the royalists, attempting to bribe Funcin-
pec members of parliament to oust Ranariddh as first prime minister and put a more
“friendly” figure in his place. In April, 12 renegade parliamentarians split from the party
and declared for the CPP. The next month, troops loyal to the CPP seized a Polish arms
shipment supposedly destined for Ranariddh's bodyguard unit, triggering further fusil-
lades of accusations.
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As Funcinpec and the Khmer Rouge neared a political deal, the movement imploded.
At midnight on June 9, seized by a final reflex of paranoia, Pol Pot ordered the killing of
