Khmer Rouge leader makes "double jeopardy" defence

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By Ek Madra

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A 1979 genocide conviction given to Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary by a Vietnamese show trial does not jeopardise his appearance before Cambodia’s U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" court, prosecutors said on Thursday.

Similarly, a 1996 amnesty granted by King Sihanouk to get Ieng Sary and a Khmer Rouge faction to surrender has no bearing on the court, where the 82-year-old is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes, but not genocide, they said.

"The amnesty and pardon did not relate to the crimes in 1975-79," Australian prosecutor William Smith said after several days of hearings in which Ieng Sary’s lawyers appealed his pre-trial detention on the grounds of "double jeopardy" -- the principle that nobody should be tried twice for the same crime.

"It simply related to the death sentence. It did not intend to cover the crimes back in that period," Smith told reporters.

Pol Pot’s ultra-Maoist regime is blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people during a 1975-1979 reign of terror that was brought to an end by a Vietnamese invasion.

The "Brother Number One" and his top cadres fled into the jungle along the Thai border, from where they continued to wage guerrilla war against first the Vietnamese and then the elected Cambodian government for .....continued below

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Ieng Sary was sentenced to death in absentia by a Vietnamese court shortly after the 1979 invasion, although historians are virtually unanimous in describing it as a show trial.

Despite this, legal experts always suspected it could cause problems for the joint Cambodian-international court, which is meant, among other things, to establish a benchmark for justice in the southeast Asian nation’s shambolic and venal legal system.

Smith said the 1979 court was "not a proper trial at all", although American Micheal Karnavas, who is defending Ieng Sary, disagreed.

"The amnesty and the pardon were to cover everything -- a clean slate," he said. "No prosecutions. That was very clear, and that was the object."

It is very unlikely that Ieng Sary, who appeared frail and in ill-health during the hearing, will be released on bail.

Ieng Sary was arrested and charged in November, along with his 76-year-old wife, Ieng Thirith, also a member of Pol’s Pot’s inner circle who served as Khmer Rouge Social Affairs Minister.

Other top cadres now in custody are "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, former President Khieu Samphan, and Duch, head of Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sleng, or "S-21" interrogation and torture centre.

Pol Pot died in 1998 near the Thai border.

(Editing by Ed Cropley and Alex Richardson)