Cambodian ex-opposition leader sentenced to 27 years in jail for 'collusion with foreigners'

Cambodian ex-opposition leader sentenced to 27 years in jail for 'collusion with foreigners'

Now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party leader Kem Sokha put under house arrest and only allowed to meet with his family

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – A court in Cambodia on Friday sentenced former opposition leader Kem Sokha to 27 years in prison for “collusion with foreigners.”

Judge Koy Sao of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court said, "Kem Sokha is sentenced to 27 years in prison on the charge of collusion with foreigners committed in Cambodia and other places."

Sokha, 69, has been put under house arrest and is only allowed to meet with his family, according to daily Khmer Times.

According to the ruling, he is not eligible to run for office or vote in elections.

Sokha is a co-founder of the now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which had achieved significant political gains in the country after its establishment in 2012. He was arrested in 2017.

Fearing arrest, several other CNRP members fled the Southeast Asian nation.

In December, Cambodian Deputy Prosecutor Plong Sophal said: “On November 9, 2013, Sokha, who was then the deputy president of the court-dissolved CNRP, told supporters in Australia’s Melbourne that he had followed US orders to plot to overthrow the Cambodian Government through a color revolution.”

“In a video clip recorded by CBN TV in Australia, Sokha confessed about his relations with foreign states and foreign agents who were teaching and helping him to prepare a plot to create a color revolution’ in Cambodia aimed at overthrowing the government through undemocratic means,” the prosecutor added.

Between 1993 and 2017, Sophal said, “Sokha and former CNRP president Sam Rainsy have plotted to go against the government.”

He accused them of "inciting people, particularly garment workers and armed forces personnel,” to go against and overthrow the government, despite the fact that “the color revolution plot and the activities of both Sokha and Rainsy in attempting to overthrow the government had failed."

“Based on the real evidence in this case, the court’s prosecutor has enough evidence to place the burden of proof on the accused that he plotted a color revolution in Cambodia,” he said.

Last year, UN experts accused Cambodia of conducting deeply flawed trials of opposition leaders, urging the government to urgently review and remedy the process to ensure the defendants’ access to justice.

UN experts Vitit Muntarbhorn, Clement Nyaletsossi Voule, and Diego Garcia-Sayan in a joint statement stated that the defendants are linked to the disbanded CNRP, which was outlawed after a strong electoral performance in 2017.

Cambodia was urged to conduct an “urgent review” of the legal proceedings brought against opposition politicians after at least 43 defendants were convicted in a third mass trial on charges of plotting and inciting against the government and sentenced to up to eight years in jail.

The Cambodian government had dismissed the UN experts' claims.

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