Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ward with Case 001 and Case 002, the tribunal's headlining events. Besides, Case 003
was technically moving forward: investigations had started, and US officials hailed this
as “another sign of progress” and one that “vindicated” the inclusion of the supermajority
In November 2010, however, Lemonde resigned his post and the cases passed to a new
German co-investigating judge, Siegfried Blunk. From the beginning Blunk showed little
inclination to pursue them. After four months, he and Bunleng announced the closure
of the Case 003 investigation. Many tribunal observers saw it as a bewildering move.
Neither of the two prospective defendants had been interviewed, and few field investig-
ations had been carried out. When the international co-prosecutor, Andrew Cayley, re-
quested further investigations, Blunk and Bunleng refused. Later, the Pre-Trial Chamber
backed their decision, cleaving again along national/international lines.
What motivated Blunk to close the case? One court insider described him as “lazy
and crazy—and that made for a pretty lethal combination.” In a rare interview, the judge
ing an eye over the evidence against Meas Muth and Sou Met, however, it was not hard
to draw a line between the skimpy investigation and the government's well-known op-
position to the case. Blunk's staff certainly seemed to see it this way. Most of his foreign
investigative staff quit in disgust. On his way out the door, consultant Steve Heder penned
a resignation letter criticizing the closure of the investigation and “the toxic atmosphere
of what is now a professionally dysfunctional office.”
25
Four months later, Blunk resigned, denying to the last that he had played any role in
burying Case 003. He left just a few weeks before the two international judges on the
Pre-Trial Chamber accused him of altering and backdating documents in the Case 003
file—an act an OSJI court monitor described as “
prima facie
evidence of serious mis-
003 controversy unfolded, the UN had stuck safely to the realm of words, beaming out
periodic statements of “concern” and making rather meaningless calls for the Cambodi-
ans to refrain from interfering in the court's work. When the UN's legal counsel Patricia
O'Brien flew to Phnom Penh after Blunk's resignation, she all but ruled out a formal in-
vestigation. If the probe uncovered anything, she told one NGO leader, the defense teams
would have a “field day” and it could “undermine Case 002.”
27
It seemed to boil down to a simple trade-off. Cases 003 and 004 would be jettisoned
in order to save the all-important second trial. The only other option for the UN was to
threaten withdrawal from the court, as Kofi Annan had suggested a decade earlier. But
to walk away from the ECCC with just one conviction would be both an admission of
failure and a colossal waste of money. The choice was between compromise and failure,
between a mirage of justice and no justice at all. “All of this was foreseeable,” Ralph
