Pol Pot trial stage-managed8217;

PHNOM PENH, August 2: The trial of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot may be a strategy by the Khmer Rouge to distance themselves from their ailing...

PHNOM PENH, August 2: The trial of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot may be a strategy by the Khmer Rouge to distance themselves from their ailing rebel leader, government officials, diplomats and other observers have claimed.

The first footage of 69-year-old Pol Pot to emerge publicly in almost 20 years showed the rebel leader being tried last week by Khmer Rouge officials in a makeshift jungle courtroom as hundreds of onlookers rhythmically chanted: 8220;Crush, crush, crush Pol Pot and his clique.8221;

Yet the fact that Pol Pot appeared uninterested as the proceedings continued and was placed in an air-conditioned land cruiser after being sentenced to life under house arrest has raised many eyebrows in Phnom Penh.

8220;If the jungle trial was real8230; Pol Pot should have been hit and buried on the spot the way his men did to almost two million Cambodians during his rule from 1975 to 1979, Yuok Chhang, director of a genocide documentation programme in Phnom Penh, wrote in an editorial in an English-language Cambodia daily.

Cambodia8217;s powerful Second Prime Minister Hun Sen also voiced doubts about the trial, telling an ABC news team it was a political farce intended to save face for the rest of the Khmer Rouge 8211; a sentiment held by many others who watched the trial footage taken at the jungle stronghold of Anlong Veng in northern Cambodia.

8220;The trial was a way for the Khmer Rouge to take care of the public relations problem that they have,8221; said one western diplomat, adding that the event 8220;could have been designed to put the majority of the Khmer Rouge in a situation where they appear to be dissident.8221;

Another Phnom Penh-based diplomat argued that the Khmer Rouge8217;s relative political clout gained through its negotiations earlier this year with the Royalist Funcinpec Party completely disappeared following the July 5-6 fighting in Phnom Penh which decimated Funcinpec8217;s forces and led to the ouster of its leader, First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh. With their prospective ally now ousted, the rebels at Anlong Veng are pursuing a new strategy, using the Pol Pot trial as a springboard into the political arena, the diplomat argued.

Story continues below this ad

Kao Kim Horn, director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, said the jungle trial was held by the Khmer Rouge to show that 8220;Pol Pot is up for grabs, and that anyone who wants Pol Pot should come and negotiate with them.8221;