Prosecutors call for release of Khmer Rouge 'First Lady'

Former Khmer Rouge leader ex-social affairs minister Ieng Thirith is seen in a court in Phnom Penh in 2011. Prosecutors at Cambodia's war crimes court on Friday conceded that Ieng Thirith, the Khmer Rouge's former "First Lady", was unlikely to face trial due to ill health and recommended her release.  

Ieng Thirith (front, 2nd from left) in 1976

Published: 31/08/2012

Bangkok Post

Prosecutors at Cambodia's war crimes court on Friday conceded that the Khmer Rouge's former "First Lady" was unlikely to face trial due to ill health and recommended her release.

The move came after experts told the UN-backed tribunal that the mental state of ex-social affairs minister Ieng Thirith, 80, had worsened since appeal judges in December requested medical treatment and further tests.

She now appears almost certain never to answer to charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, unlike three other top leaders -- including her husband, former foreign minister Ieng Sary -- currently on trial.

"She is not currently able to exercise her fair trial rights and she's therefore currently unfit to stand trial," prosecutor Tarik Abdulhak told the tribunal.

"It is therefore unlikely that she will face a trial again in any immediate or foreseeable period of time and therefore the grounds for her continued detention, in our respectful submission, no longer exist," he said.

Prosecutors recommended a suspension of the legal proceedings against Ieng Thirith but said the indictment would not be withdrawn.

They requested conditions on her release including a requirement to live at a specified address, undergo a weekly security check, surrender her passport and have a twice-yearly medical exam.

Freeing Ieng Thirith -- who was the sister-in-law of regime leader Pol Pot -- would dismay many Khmer Rouge survivors still haunted by the horrors of the 1975-1979 regime, blamed for the deaths of up to two million people.

Led by "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge wiped out nearly a quarter of the Cambodian population through starvation, overwork and executions in a bid to create an agrarian utopia.