An investigation at Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes court has concluded there was no theft of documents from a Khmer Rouge leader’s defense team, a tribunal spokesman said yesterday.
Last week Michiel Pestman, the Dutch defense lawyer for regime ideologue Nuon Chea, said he suspected confidential papers had been stolen from his office after he found them floating among waterlilies in a pond at the court.
But court spokesman Lars Olsen said a tribunal security report had concluded there was no theft in the incident that some local media dubbed “Waterlilygate.”
“The main conclusions are clear: there is no evidence to substantiate allegations of foul play or theft of documents,” Olsen told reporters.
He said that details of how the documents ended up in the pond would be revealed in the report.
The confidential documents were drafts of a defense letter to the recently appointed head of the court’s victims unit, Helen Jarvis, raising concerns about her membership of Australia’s Leninist Party Faction (LPF).
Jarvis signed a 2006 LPF statement that proclaimed: “Against the bourgeoisie and their state agencies we don’t respect their laws and their fake moral principles.”
The defense has said Jarvis’s statement indicated she might not respect the rules of the Khmer Rouge court, however tribunal spokesman Olsen said the administration respected her right to have personal views.
“Dr Jarvis’s political affiliations were well known prior to her being made head of the victims’ unit,” Olsen said.
The troubled tribunal, which is now trying former Khmer Rouge prison chief Duch, also faces accusations of political interference by the government and claims that Cambodian staff were forced to pay kickbacks for their jobs.
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