CAMBODIA GENOCIDE COURT WARNS FRENCH LAWYER OVER 'BEHAVIOUR'

Verges, whose clients have included Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, earlier told reporters he was indignant to discover 16,000 pages of court documents had not been translated into French.

PHNOM PENH, April 23, 2008 (AFP) - Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal Wednesday warned controversial French lawyer Jacques Verges over his "behaviour" during a hearing for his client, former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan. The court adjourned an appeal by Khieu Samphan against his pre-trial detention after the flamboyant Verges said he was unable to act for him as the court documents had not been translated into French, one of the tribunal's three official languages. The judges said Verges and his Cambodian co-lawyer had given no indication of any such difficulties since filing their appeal on December 21, 2007, adding that all the documents had been translated into Khmer, English and French. "As a consequence of the behaviour of the international co-lawyer advising with effectively no notice that he will not continue to act in this appeal within the circumstances mentioned above, a warning is given to him ... as he has abused the process of the pre-trial chamber and the rights of the charged person," they said in a statement on their decision to adjourn the proceedings. Therefore the court decided to "issue a warning to the international co-lawyer pursuant to internal rule 38," the five judges said in a signed statement. They said Khieu Samphan's appeal against detention would therefore be adjourned to a date to be decided. Verges, whose clients have included Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Venezuelan terrorist "Carlos the Jackal," earlier told reporters he was "indignant" to discover 16,000 pages of court documents had not been translated into French. "I am unable to know what my client is charged with," Verges, 83, shouted in French, adding: "This is unheard of, except in dictatorships." "His detention is illegal because it has been ordered from a file to which his lawyers did not have access," said the lawyer nicknamed "The Devil's Advocate" for representing infamous defendants. Khieu Samphan was detained by the court in November on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Khmer Rouge's brutal 1975-1979 regime. Up to two million people are believed to have been executed or died of starvation and overwork as the communist regime emptied Cambodia's cities, exiling millions to vast collective farms in a bid to forge an agrarian utopia.