Defense Questions Validity of Documentation at Tribunal

Youk Chhang, head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-CAM), in Tuol Sleng school, a former Khmer Rouge interrogation center turned into a museum, where many of the documents he is researching still are stored.

Monday, 16 January 2012
Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh

Defense attorneys for jailed Khmer Rouge leaders told the tribunal Monday they want the head of a leading research organization to testify over the authenticity of hundreds of thousands of documents that comprise much of the evidence at the UN-backed court.

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Chhang Youk, head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, “must appear before this court,” said the lawyer for Nuon Chea, who alongside two other leaders of the Khmer Rouge is facing charges of atrocity crimes including genocide.

Without Chhang Youk’s testimony, the lawyer, Jasper Pauw, said, some 500,000 documents the center provided for trials “cannot be considered as authentic and reliable and must therefore be called inadmissible.”