Tribunal restarts

The end of a boycott at the Khmer Rouge tribunal didn’t prevent the first evidentiary hearing in Case 002/02 from being uninterrupted yesterday, as testimony was cut short when octogenarian defendant Khieu Samphan was taken to hospital after complaining of dizziness. “We heard a letter from the treating doctor at the [Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia] that Mr Khieu Samphan is very dizzy and his blood pressure is very high, and the treating doctors at the ECCC decided to send him to the Khmer Soviet Hospital,” trial chamber president Nil Nonn announced at the start of yesterday’s afternoon session. Proceedings, he continued, would resume this morning, Samphan’s health permitting. Despite having been hospitalised before with relatively minor ailments, Samphan, 83, has perhaps been the healthiest of Case 002’s original four defendants, almost always appearing in the courtroom and typically standing to deliver statements. By contrast, former Case 002 defendant Ieng Thirith was severed from proceedings in 2012 after being found unfit to stand trial due to advancing dementia. Her husband and co-defendant Ieng Sary died in 2013 of heart failure. Samphan’s current Case 002/02 co-defendant, 88-year-old Nuon Chea, has also been hospitalised multiple times, and watched significant portions of Case 002/01 proceedings from a holding cell, finding it too taxing to attend hearings in the courtroom. However, his health has improved in recent months. Samphan defender Kong Sam Onn said yesterday evening that Samphan remained in hospital, and that he had received no word on his condition.