The rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge began its path to power under the name Communist Party of Kampuchea, staging insurgencies across Cambodia in the late 1960s. In 1970, Cambodian Premier Lon Nol and the National Assembly deposed then leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who fled to Beijing and became nominal head of Chinese backed government-in-exile, dominated by the Khmer Rouge.

By 1973, when the United States government suspended aid to Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge had made large territorial gains, and on April 17, 1975, they were able to capture the capital, Phnom Penh.

Under the leadership of Pol Pot and the Standing Committee of the Khmer Rouge's Central Committee, the Khmer Rouge undertook a massive communist experiment, to crush modernity, expel all foreigners, seal off the outside world and turn Cambodia into an agrarian revolutionary state.

During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the population, at the same time executing members of select racial, religious and social groups, including Vietnamese Cambodians, Islamic Khmers, Buddhist monks and intellectuals.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has described the actions of the Khmer Rouge as "of a character and scale that it was still almost impossible to comprehend".

In December 1978, after several years of border conflict and a flood of refugees into Vietnam, Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979 and deposing the Khmer Rouge regime. The Khmer Rouge fled west, where they continued to control an area near the Thai border for much of the 1980s. Their removal led to a civil war that continued until 1998.

The road to justice

In June 1997, the then Co-Prime Ministers Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Samdech Hun Sen wrote to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, requesting UN assistance in prosecuting the crimes of the Khmer Rouge.

They asked for help because they felt that the Cambodian judiciary lacked sufficient resources and expertise to undertake such a complex task on their own, and also because the crimes had become a worldwide concern.

After initially favouring an international tribunal, six years of negotiations between the UN and the Cambodian Tribunal Task Force have led to a mixed model for trying the leaders.

The courts

This mixed model temporarily adds two new courts to the Cambodian legal system, courts known as Extraordinary Chambers. These two new courts comprise the
Trial Chamber and the Supreme Court Chamber.

Initially, two co-prosecutors, one Cambodian and one international, will collect evidence and decide who will be charged and with what crimes. Two investigation judges will then consider those cases and decide if the case proceeds to trial.

A spokesman for the extraordinary chamber in the court of Cambodia, Reach Sambath, says there is a lot of evidence to consider.

"There's millions of documents left, and several killing field sites and a lot of prisons, and a movie and videos have been made, and millions of Cambodians are still alive," he said.

In the Trial Chamber, there will be five judges, comprising three Cambodian and two international judges, while in the Supreme Court Chamber there will be seven judges - four Cambodian and three international. There will be no jury, and all decisions will be made by the judges.

Decisions will be made using a new 'supermajority' formula, in which at least one international judge has to agree with the Cambodians for a guilty verdict, otherwise the case will be dismissed.

Those convicted face a maximum sentence of life in prison and minimum of five years in prison. Cambodia has no death penalty.

The defendants

Using Cambodian criminal law and legal procedure, with some international elements, the courts will try only top Khmer Rouge leaders, and only during the period from 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979, during which they were in power.

It will not target many low and mid-level members who have reintegrated into Cambodian society, and will not posthumously convict deceased members of the Khmer Rouge, which include leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

Surviving members of the regime, including his top deputy Nuon Chea, former head of state Khieu Samphan and ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary, are in their 70s and 80s, prompting fears that they too could die before facing justice.

So far only two former regime leaders, Ta Mok and Kaing Khek Iev, known as Duch, have been jailed on genocide charges.

Other former members including Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary live freely in Cambodia.

Nuon Chea has repeatedly said that he is ready and willing to face the courts.

A long process

Twenty-seven years after the Khmer Rouge was removed from power, ten years after the UN was first approached, and after six years of negotiation, the process of bringing the Khmer Rouge leaders to justice has begun.

International judges from Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Sri Lanka and the United States have been sworn-in, alongside senior Cambodian representatives, ahead of the commencement of the trials.

International prosecutor Robert Petit from Canada and Cambodian prosecutor Chea Leang have begun examining the huge amounts of evidence available, in a process that is expected to continue until mid-2007.

Speaking at the swearing-in of the trial judges in Cambodia, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Nicolas Michel has told the people of Cambodia and the international community of the global significance of this process.

"You are writing yourselves into history," he said.

"Cambodian history, as well as that of an international community increasingly engaged, here and elsewhere, in creating a culture of accountability to replace the sinister culture of impunity."