Cambodia Hybrid Court Indictment Made Public

The indictment against Duch, who ran the infamous Tuol Sleng prison in Pnomh Penh during the 1970s, was posted today on the website of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia: http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/default.aspx. Duch has been in prison for nearly a decade. He is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not genocide. Indeed, the word genocide does not appear in the 45-page document. The prosecutors are wisely sticking to settled law, and are not trying to push the interpretation of the term genocide, despite a widespread popular conception that this is how the Cambodian atrocities of the 1970s should be characterised. The one exception to what is a pronounced trend towards such careful and restrictive approaches to the definition of genocide is the application for an arrest warrant agains Sudan's president Bashir made last month by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.