Former Khmer Rouge minister appeals for release

Описание: (21 May 2008) SHOTLIST

AP Television News
1. Wide exterior of court
2. Close up of sign reading "Court room"
3. Wide of security checking car
4. Wide of people lining up to get into court compound
5. Mid of people
6. Van carrying Ieng Thirith going from detention centre to court

POOL
7. Zoom in on Ieng Thirith inside the court
8. Wide of Ieng Thirith seated in court
9. Pan from tribunal judges to Ieng Thirith

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10. UN and Cambodia flags


STORYLINE

A former Khmer Rouge government minister facing charges of crimes against humanity before Cambodia's United Nations-assisted genocide tribunal appealed for release from pre-trial detention on Wednesday .

Ieng Thirith, who was the Khmer Rouge social affairs minister, is among five suspects facing trial for their alleged roles in the regime's brutality.

Her hearing was scheduled to last one day.

The tribunal seeks justice for atrocities committed by the ultra-communist group when it ruled Cambodia in 1975-79. Its radical policies caused the deaths of about 1.7 (m) million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

The Cambodian lawyer for the 76-year-old Ieng Thirith has cited a lack of evidence for detaining her and said she suffers from chronic illnesses, "both mental and physical," that require constant medical treatment.

The suspect is the wife of Ieng Sary, who was the regime's deputy prime minister and foreign minister. He is also detained on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Ieng Thirith is also the sister-in-law of Khmer Rouge supreme leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

In a detention order issued in November, the tribunal's investigating judges said Ieng Thirith is to be tried for supporting Khmer Rouge policies and practices that were "characterised by murder, extermination, imprisonment, persecution on political grounds and other inhuman acts."

She rejected the charges against her as "100 percent false," according to the detention order.

She has denied responsibility for any criminal acts and said she worked at all times for the benefit of the people, according to an appeal filed in January by her lawyer, Phat Pouv Seang.

Ieng Thirith, who was among the first generation of female Cambodian intellectuals, studied English literature in Paris and worked as a professor
after returning to Cambodia in 1957. Three years later, she founded a private English school in the capital, Phnom Penh.

She followed her husband into the jungle to flee government repression in 1965. Their communist movement later became a guerrilla force that toppled the pro-American government in 1975, turning the country in a vast slave-labour camp, anyone deemed bourgeois executed or imprisoned.

The husband and wife, who are held in separate cells, have been allowed to occasionally see each other in the presence of the detention guards, tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said on Tuesday.

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