Graphic Testimony in Court as Khieu Samphan’s Blood Pressure Rises

The third day of evidentiary hearings in ECCC Case 002/02 got underway today with a special audience of 430 people from Samrong district in attendance. They were there in support of the prosecution’s witness who also hails from Takeo province. But the court had preliminary matters to tend to before testimony would begin.

After calling the court to order, President Nil Nonn announced that, due to the illness of Judge You Ottara, Reserve Judge Thou Mony would be sitting in his stead.

The greffier reported all parties were present along with witness 2TCW936 and witness 2TCCP296.

Briefly, the President ran through pending scheduling matters. He reviewed that Khieu Samphan was released from hospital on January 15, 2015, that the expert medical assessments on both accused were due today, and that a subsequent hearing on the fitness of the accused to stand trial was set for January 23, 1015. He reminded counsel that there was a deadline of January 22, 2015, at 3:00 P.M. for them to notify the court as to whether they would require a hearing on competency.

Nil Nonn then reiterated two recent rulings. Firstly, that the Trial Chamber had rejected Khieu Samphan’s latest request for reconsideration of the appointment of standby counsel on the basis that there were no new grounds to reconsider the previously-rejected application, and, secondly, that the court had also rejected defence counsel objections to the new sitting arrangements for the standby counsel.

Because of the importance of the issue and especially for the benefit of Khieu Samphan, the President then clarified the role of standby counsel. He reviewed how the court had qualified defence counsels’ behaviour as misconduct, the recommendation under Rule 38(1) of a sanction of Khieu Samphan’s counsel by non-payment of certain of their fees, the referral under Rule 38(2) of Defence Counsels’ conduct to their respective professional bodies and the appointment of standby counsel to take over the defence if and when the court decides their services are necessary. Until that time, standby counsel would not be replacing counsel or actively participating in the proceedings. Standby counsels’ “most important” task now is to familiarize themselves with the case file and pleadings, and to attend the hearings so they can get up to speed and be of service when required.

Nil Nonn was very clear that the appointment of the standby counsel was “aimed to ensure the proper administration of justice in the conduct of the trial.” Succinctly, there are to be no more delays.

On the issue of the Civil Party Lead Co-Lawyers request to have a map of the cooperatives admitted into evidence, the court ruled that the map would not be admitted. Khieu Samphan had objected to the request, arguing that the document was “not conclusive of the truth,” as per Rule 87(4), and that it did not meet the criteria established in Rule 87(3).

The Civil Party Co-Lawyers were more successful with their other current request. The Trial Chamber affirmed that they would be allowed to examine the experts in the competency hearing on Friday consistent with previous practice and Rule 91(2), as long as their questions are relevant to the question of fitness of the accused to stand trial.

Mr. Koppe interrupted the proceedings with an urgent request that his client be granted permission to go down to the holding cell as he was feeling dizzy. Mr. Nil Nonn ruled Nuon Chea could follow the proceedings by remote means from downstairs, asking his counsel to submit to the court a waiver of his client’s presence with his client’s thumbprint affixed as soon as possible.

No sooner had the court resumed than a glitch in the audio system occurred. The President called an adjournment for half an hour to get the system back on line.

Meas Sokha, witness 2TCW936, was recalled to the stand after the break.

Co-Prosecutor Dale Lysak quickly reviewed the high spots of the witness’s prior testimony: of how his entire family had been arrested following a meeting in which their thumbprints had been collected, a meeting that had been called to remove a cooperative official; that they had been detained on arrival at Kraing Ta Chan security center in one of the three buildings that housed prisoners.

Mr. Lysak led the witness through the arrival of the family around 4:00 P.M, to a cell 12 meters by 5 meters, holding more than 20 prisoners either shackled or handcuffed; of how the prisoners had to place the rings of the shackles around their ankles themselves. Mr. Meas related that because he was a young child, he was not so encumbered but that his mother and sister had to wear the shackles at night. They were only released from them during their work hours, he said.

The Co-Prosecutor asked about the facilities for babies and young children. Mr. Meas said they stayed with the mothers so they could be breast fed. If the mothers didn’t have enough milk, the children died. The mothers, themselves, were allowed to work outside in the daytime but were jailed at night.

The witness related how no one had enough food or clean water. Their rations were two meals a day of a ladle of gruel containing three small pieces of potato, water plants, ten to fifteen grains of rice and some salt. Everyone was always hungry. The source of their dirty drinking water was near where fertilizer was stored.

The building they lived in was very dirty and filled with small insects, like lice, that would bite. He related how if they did not respond at night when their names were called, the guard would beat them.

The bathroom was a container to store feces and another small container to collect urine which was then poured into the storage container.

There was no medical treatment. Many who got sick died without treatment. And almost every day, the sick and the starved and the tortured died, “one or two a night before they could be taken to be killed.”

Mr. Meas said he was at Kraing Ta Chan from 1976 to August, 1978. He was then temporarily transferred to another cooperative until taken back again. His time at the security center was “two months short of three years.”

It was a long three years. His father was the first to die, three days before the start of his own detention. He had been “smashed” for inciting people to depose a village chief. His mother worked making gruel for the prisoners; his sister had a different work assignment. During the day, his job was to tend two cows and four water buffalo. He went to the fields but had to return to the compound by 5:00 P.M. each night. At night, he was sent out to collect frogs. His duties allowed him movement around the prison which enabled him to see what happened to the other prisoners. In 1977, he remembered about 100 villagers being brought in. There was no room in the buildings to hold them so they were taken to the pits. Three to four at a time, children, the old, people would be killed and put in pits, five meters in circumference and three meters deep. The pits were located south of the pond in the prison compound. Prisoners had been warned that if they went there, they would be killed. Music would be played through loud speakers and loud instruments would be played to cover the sound of the killing. The loudspeakers were located at the detention buildings not near the killing sites.

The Co-Prosecutor switched his questioning to the matter of the interrogations asking where they were held. Mr. Meas described a place about 50 meters away from the detention building and the tools that were in use in the torture space: staffs, chains, axes, pliers. He said that while some prisoners confessed, others did not. He was never interrogated as only adults were interrogated not children.

 

Mr. Meas described how he saw the interrogations in progress when he went about his duties, walking around picking vegetables for the kitchen, for instance. The kitchen was only about five meters away. He was warned not to speak about what he saw but he saw the torture and the prisoners bleeding from being beaten with stems of bamboo, fingernails pulled out with pliers…

Mr. Lysak referred to the witness’s prior testimony in his OICJ statement and asked about how Mr. Meas had heard the interrogators accuse the victims of being CIA, of demanding what rank they had held and the covering of a prisoner’s face with a plastic bag. Because he was close, Mr. Meas said. He then elaborated that he had seen a prisoner suffocated with plastic only once and that the incident occurred over about five minutes before the man confessed. But, they continued to beat him. He felt that if a prisoner answered immediately, he did not get mistreated.

The Co-Prosecutor brought up some of his mother’s OICJ testimony. Mr. Meas knew she had been questioned about his father, where he had been living, “did he love liberal regimes or conservative regimes…” He said his father had been accused of being an “agent” when he did not “enter the revolution.”

Mr. Koppe then objected to Mr. Lysak’s questions concerning a photocopy of a notebook because the photocopy was being represented as an original. He explained that DC-Cam reports that there are no original documents left from Kraing Ta Chan and that he had no objection to the document per se, just that it was portrayed as being an original. After Judge Fenz clarified his objection and asked if the court could move on, Mr. Koppe then challenged the document on the basis of authenticity. Judge Fenz, after pointing out that the probative value can be taken into account later, noted Mr. Koppe’s objection to the phrasing of the question for the record and that the record should reflect that there are no original documents remaining. Based on the argument that the “photocopies are the originals” and that DC-Cam had testified that the photocopies came from Kraing Ta Chan, Nil Nonn ruled in favour of the witness being allowed to see the photocopies of witness lists and that the lists could be put on the screen.

The Co-Prosecutor then spent considerable time having Meas Sokha identify various family members (his mother, father, sisters, brother-in-law, aunt and uncle) and villagers from the lists and information in the photocopied notebooks. He was able to confirm approximately when some of them had been arrested, that his aunt and uncle and their six children had died at the camp, and what happened to some of the others. Mr. Koppe objected, asserting that Mr. Lysak was leading the witness, “feeding him information from the documents…laundering information in the documents” The court overruled the objection.

Mr. Meas was further questioned about how he knew the prisoners were killed. He answered that during his duties around the various areas of the compound, he saw murders taking place. After 2 P.M., while he was tending the cattle, he saw prisoners taken away to the pits. Two or three at a time were walked right by in front of him. He stated that the prisoners cooperated because they had been told that they would be returning to the cooperative after they had met with senior cadres. Mr. Meas had seen victims held tightly by two men and then seen their throats being cut with sharpened 60 cm. long knives “two fingers thick.” He saw children being “thrown against trees and then dropped into pits.” On questioning, he estimated that the number killed varied each day: “50-70-80-100. The minimum was 20 prisoners a day. Prisoners were brought in every night for detention.” 

In August of 1978, he had been sent to a cooperative in another district. In January, 1979, when the Vietnamese came, he escaped up a mountain. The guards ran away rather than climb the mountain and then he was free from detention. His mother, sister, brother and three other people were freed at the same time.

Mr. Koppe raised an objection to the witness being asked if he had ever seen any Khmer Rouge leaders visit the Kraing Ta Chan. His argument, that the term “Khmer Rouge” was too general a term to have any meaning at the time the testimony addressed, was rejected by the court. Mr. Meas then answered that he had been in the prison office when the Chairman of the Committee for the region visited.

Judge Fenz asked Mr. Meas to describe how “nearby” he had been, and to describe the “open” interrogation area. He explained the area had been “quite close to where I was walking,” and drew a picture of a building without walls, a large hall with only a roof, minimal furniture and old clothes taken from prisoners stored in back. Mr. Meas’ attention was obviously lagging, and Judge Fenz was unsuccessful in trying to get him to clarify how often he had seen torture, beatings or any kind of violence against prisoners.

Judge Lavergne wanted to have a breakdown of the number of staff and whether any women suffered sexual violence. Mr. Meas recalled ten guards. Duch was chief and he took notes at the interrogations but another man was in charge of the killings. Six guards collected the prisoners and took them to be killed. Because he was young, Mr. Meas said he was not aware of rapes at the time. He knew people guilty of moral offences had their heads shaved and “banged coconut shells.” Judge Lavergne enquired as to whether the prisoners were separated into groups, workers away from other prisoners, for example but Mr. Meas said there was no distinction between prisoners. They were put in the buildings until the buildings were full. But the staff lived differently. The guards got a different and better meal (with four dishes and rice) than the prisoners. Some of the cadres made white wine. The courtroom was startled to attention when Mr. Meas testified that he had seen many human gall bladders drying in the sun. After the cadres flavoured the wine by putting one or two of the organs in a large container of it, Mr. Meas said he did not know what they did with the rest of the gall bladders. They drank the wine to make themselves brave. One hundred and thirty was the most people that he had seen executed in one day. There was no space to house them so they were not interrogated, just killed. There were no killings in the morning. The slaughter started around 2:00 P.M. and lasted to 5:00 P.M., sometimes to 8:00P.M.

The Trial Chamber adjourned until 1:30 P.M. for lunch.

Pich Ang, Civil Party Lead Co-Lawyer, picked up the questioning in the afternoon, by asking Mr. Meas to describe his living conditions and his work duties.

Mr. Meas related that he slept in a house although some prisoners slept at the dams or other work sites. He had only one set of clothing a year which he lived in 24 hours a day. He studied under a tree about the nature of the work they were to do to produce 3 tonnes per hectare. Literacy and numbers were not taught. The teachers as well as the students were all illiterate. They were taught to love one another, to eat and live in a community, to love Angkar without limitation, that Angkar was his parents. He understood Angkar to mean “upper leaders, upper echelon.” Because of his work, he could not visit home. He was assigned to tend cows, he had no choice about it. He received nothing for his work. Everything was communal. The only personal possessions he had were his bowl and spoon. As Buddhism was banned, they could not even hold a ceremony for the dead.

Pich Ang asked him he had returned to Kraing Ta Chan to collect the skeletons of his dead relative? Mr. Meas had gone back but been unsuccessful in identifying any familial remains.

He would like to see a memorial to the dead built at Kraing Ta Chan.

Suon Visal, Nuon Chea’s defence counsel, had Mr. Meas review his lifestyle at Kraing Ta Chan.

Mr. Meas said children 15-17 were put in a children’s unit; under 15, in a candidates unit where he was for a time with six others. They lived in a house because of their age and ate communal meals brought to them by cooperative members. The rations were insufficient but they could not forage for food individually because everything belonged to the community. By day, they tended the cattle, supervised by two “military”. He could collect water lily and tamarind for the kitchen. He could wander with the animals but he had been told that if he ran away, his mother would be killed. At night he was sent out hunting for birds, frogs and animals.

Mr. Suon Visal jumped on Mr. Meas’ discrepancy between his prior testimony that eight family members and five villagers had been arrested at the same time and his testimony today that the numbers were ten and four, respectively.

After Mr. Suon had asked if Mr. Meas had the same rights as other guards, the President told the counsel “to ask proper questions.” Mr. Meas replied that other prisoners were not allowed to talk or move, or they would be beaten as punishment.

The Defence Counsel also enquired as to the layout of the security center and what the buildings were like. Mr. Meas described two buildings as being attached, some 15 meters away from the kitchen in the middle of the compound. There was barbed wire below the roofs, barbed wire fences (two fences about 200 meters away from each other), and wooden floors; the execution area was covered in coconut leaves.

Mr. Meas was questioned about his ability to judge distances based on his prior testimony that he had climbed up trees to see the execution site about five meters away. He estimated the distance from himself to the President to be five to seven meters. The Co-Prosecutor objected to Mr. Suon testifying that the distance was really closer to ten meters but he was overruled. Mr. Meas then said that one of the executioners had pointed a finger at him to chase him away. Mr. Meas was scared. He had been warned not to go there and he did not intend to see the executions which he observed for about ten minutes. He said he knew the number of people being killed because he would overhear discussions about the numbers of people brought in. The guards trusted him because he never talked about their work. He knew he would be in trouble if he did.

After a short break, it was time for Mr. Koppe, international defence counsel for Nuon Chea, to take the floor. Mr. Koppe discovered Mr. Meas has been on the building committee for religious halls and a study hall at the Kraing Ta Chan since 2006. Before that, he had been a soldier from 1980 to 1997, stationed in Takeo province, but that he did not know of any criminal investigation of Democratic Kampuchea at that time. He reiterated that Democratic Kampuchea had “committed torture against the people.”

Mr. Koppe questioned the witness at some length about the incident in which a prisoner was suffocated. Mr. Meas thought it was after June, 1976, probably September, 1976, and in the dry season as he could remember it was hot and he had been in the security center three months. Mr. Meas scoffed at the counsel’s question as to whether he could remember the faces of the dead. Mr Meas said he remembered the faces of those who survived. He did not know how many prisoners were in the buildings, he did not count them and, after their interrogations, they were returned to the buildings. Mr. Meas was hazy on many of the exact details of the day of the suffocation. But he was adamant that when, about 9:00 A.M., as he was taking sour fruit to the kitchen, he saw a man being severely beaten, tortured, and suffocated with plastic. An hour later, he saw the man being carried back into the detention building. He also remembered that the man was quite tall and “a little fat.”He died the next day of his injuries. After this, Mr. Meas never looked at the interrogations as he found them too scary.

Mr. Lysak objected to Mr. Koppe’s line of questioning using terms such as “house” for an open air space that was a roof and little else, and accusing him of trying to mislead the witness by creating false testimony.

Mr. Meas continued with his description of where the interrogators had been and said that the note taker was using a pen and not a typewriter. He could remember the gist of the questions but answered that the prisoner was asked his position, his rank, was he a General or a Colonel but, by then, he could not say much because of the suffocation.

President Nil Nonn interrupted to caution Mr. Meas that he did not have to answer any question which was a demand for a response to an assumption by counsel, including Mr. Koppe’s suggestions about how long the victim was interrogated before the suffocation incident.

Obviously distressed from the long ordeal of testifying, Mr. Meas objected to Mr. Koppe asking him any more of these sorts of questions. It had been a long session for Mr. Meas and Mr. Koppe had trouble getting direct answers to the rest of his examination. Mr. Meas did say the prisoner was kicked and that he could not react to it because he was cuffed. Initially, the man “had no position.” He was just a driver, but the interrogators did not believe him.

Kong Sam Onn interrupted the hearing to request an adjournment on the basis that Khieu Samphan was fatigued and unable to follow the proceedings. Judge Fenz asked if his client could follow from a holding cell downstairs to which Mr. Kong agreed.

Mr. Koppe then continued with further questions about the suffocation victim. Mr. Meas said the interrogators showed the man a report and accused him of being CIA. The witness explained that this was standard procedure: “people lived and died on the basis of a report from their village.” He confirmed he saw a plastic bag on only one occasion, saying that he “did not try and watch any more,” after that. On his duties to collect the sewage, he later saw the victim , shackled, lying between other prisoners in rows.

At that, and on the announcement that Khieu Samphan was suffering from high blood pressure and requesting an adjournment, the President of the Trial Chamber adjourned until 9:00 A.M., on January 22, 2015.