Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
posed by those so blinded by ideology, beliefs or religion that they are willing to do any-
thing, to employ any means, however destructive or unlawful, to achieve their goals,”
Deputy Co-Prosecutor William Smith told the chamber. Nuon Chea was “a bitter man
who sees foreign imperialists, the CIA, KGB and Vietnamese spies lurking around every
corner.” Khieu Samphan, meanwhile, had presented himself implausibly as “the only man
in all of Cambodia who knew nothing, saw nothing and heard nothing.”
31
As the trial came to an end, with a judgment expected in August 2014, a glaring ques-
tion remained: what next? When the ECCC was set up, the UN had initially promised
donors that trials would take around three years. In reality, securing three convictions
had taken eight years and cost around $200 million. By 2012 donors had grown fatigued
and increasingly reluctant to provide the voluntary tranches of funding that kept the court
afloat. The Cambodian government, too, was slow in ponying up money for the national
side of the court, leaving national staff working without pay for months at a time. When
the Case 002 indictment was severed into smaller sections, few people at the court had
given any thought to what might come next.
In late 2013, with judgments now in sight, OSJI urged the UN, donor countries, and the
Cambodian government to make up their minds. They could either give the ECCC their
full backing to see out the second phase of Case 002, or admit the practical and political
difficulties and wind things up. Characteristically, they did neither. They continued dis-
pensing droplets of funding that left the court limping forward. Prosecutors busied them-
selves with preparations for Case 002/02, the staff working on short-term contracts, and
initial hearings began in July 2014. But serious questions remained as to whether there
would be enough money to see it through. As one ECCC judge told me, “there's so little
trust as to where all this is going to end.”
More vexed was the issue of Cases 003 and 004. After Siegfried Blunk's departure, the
Cambodians had again held up proceedings by blocking the approval of the reserve inter-
national co-investigating judge, Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, who had arrived in late 2011
and thrown himself into his work. Kasper-Ansermet was keen on social media. Via Twit-
ter, he had denounced Blunk's closure of Case 003 and promised to reopen the investiga-
tions. The Supreme Council of the Magistracy seized on his tweets as a pretext—probably
a legitimate one—to block his appointment. After his rejection and subsequent resigna-
tion, the 003 and 004 investigations received a new lease on life under a new co-invest-
igating judge, Mark Harmon. But it all seemed futile. Barring a change of heart by Hun
Sen, the cases stood little chance of proceeding to trial. Again, the donors dithered. They
provided funds to keep Harmon's investigations on-going, which allowed them to say the
process was working, at least on their side. But all it did was kick the can of confrontation
a little further down the road.
