Law and judiciary

The Court of Appeal on Tuesday began hearing the appeal of six men sentenced to between 15 and 17 years jail in 2011 for forming an armed anti-government force called the Sovanna Phum, or Golden Village, in 2006. The men‚ Chea Sarann, 51; Liv Soksovann, 51; ...

Opposition leaders Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha joined dozens of monks and hundreds of supporters on Monday for a Pchum Ben ceremony at the memorial stupa in Phnom Penh honoring the 16 people who were killed by a grenade attack on an opposition rally in ...

Activists are skeptical that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen will follow through on a pledge to stop a contentious practice of appropriating rural land for commercial use, an issue that hurt the leader and his party in elections in July. In its new five-year political platform ...

Villagers have accused a CPP commune chief in Ratanakkiri province of threatening four ethnic minority Tampoun men after they filed a complaint against him for allegedly selling off community land to a local businessman. Rocham Norng, a Tampoun villager in Bakeo district, has alleged that Soeung ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday heard the case of a Malaysian and a Sri Lankan charged with using fake bank cards to withdraw up to $50,000 from ATMs during Khmer New Year in 2012. Delvin Joshap, 30, of Malaysia, had masterminded the crime and ...

The Japanese ambassador is set to meet with senior police officials to discuss the shooting of a Japanese tourist in Phnom Penh on Saturday, according to an embassy official, while the U.S. Embassy on Monday said it was “very troubled” by a similar attack on ...

A coalition of 30 NGOs on Friday called on the Government to draft and pass a freedom of information law to overthrow its “culture of secrecy”. The groups said Saturday is the 10th Right to Know Day, but that Cambodians are being denied a “fundamental human ...

Deputy Prime Minister Sok An has a stunning portfolio of positions within the CPP government. On Monday, CPP lawmakers once again appointed Mr. An as the Cabinet Minister for Prime Minister Hun Sen. He is also the chairman of the state-controlled Cambodian National Petroleum Authority and ...

Nearly half of defendants lack legal representation, 80 per cent are held in pretrial detention, and a sizeable chunk confess before they get a hearing, according to an online public database released yesterday by the Cambodia Center for Human Rights. The database reveals numerous infringements on ...

Defence Minister Tea Banh yesterday said the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces are ready to protect the Kingdom’s constitution should the opposition’s threatened general strike fall on the wrong side of the law. “A nationwide general strike or mass demonstration must be held under the framework of ...

Sok Sam Oeun and Born Samnang left Prey Sar prison’s Correctional Center 1 on Thursday for the last time, putting behind them an ordeal that has lasted nearly a decade during which they were wrongfully imprisoned for a total of five years each for the ...

After spending 2,073 days in prison, Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun were exonerated on Wednesday by the Supreme Court of having killed popular union leader Chea Vichea in 2004. Legal expert Sok Sam Oeun of the Cambodian Defenders Project said that although the two ...

A community forest patrol of locals yesterday confiscated a large haul of illegally logged luxury wood that was being transported to the Vietnamese border in Mondolkiri province, local officials said. Commune police chief Pech Sotheary said the case has been referred to provincial forestry administration ...

Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun, the men wrongfully sentenced to 20 years in prison for the 2004 murder of Free Trade Union (FTU) leader Chea Vi­chea, were exonerated Wednesday by the Supreme Court of the crime. Responding to the acquittal, Chea Vichea’s brother, Chea Mony, ...

The Cambodian government has privately pledged that it will pass the long-awaited “three fundamental laws” aimed at reforming the judiciary during the first session of parliament in early 2014, UN rights envoy Surya Subedi said. The laws – which focus on codifying the court’s jurisdiction, laying ...

During an epic speech on Wednesday that lasted for more than six-and-a-half hours, Prime Minister Hun Sen told his newly approved Cabinet that they would be subject to increased public scrutiny as part of a series of reforms to be undertaken by the CPP over ...

U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi on Wednesday wrapped up his appearance before the Human Rights Council in Geneva with a vow to continue assisting Cambodia in improving its judicial system as NGOs provided withering testimony of the situation of rights in the country. A dialogue ...

Three officials from Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district were charged on September 10 for threatening and intimidating a villager after he filed a lawsuit related to the corrupt sale of community land in 2011, according to a letter obtained by the Post yesterday. Romas Svang, 47, of Yatung commune, received ...

Cambodia’s Supreme Court ordered the release of two men Wednesday who were wrongly convicted and jailed for the 2004 murder of a prominent opposition activist. The court’s decision to drop all charges came amid renewed calls to free the men, whom leading international rights groups have ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday announced his new government’s five-year strategy, vowing to deepen reforms in all fields to ensure sustainable growth and poverty reduction. “Reforms are the top priority for Cambodia and the country will continue deepening reforms in all fields in order ...

A day after its opening session and still devoid of the 55 lawmakers-elect of the opposition CNRP, the country’s new, one-party National Assembly voted Prime Minister Hun Sen in for yet another five-year term Tuesday and approved an extensive re­shuffle of his Cabinet. In a ...

The Appeal Court has reduced the already shortened sentence of the 31-year-old son of a high-ranking official who killed three women in a car accident, ordering him to serve just two months in prison, a court official said Tuesday. Bun Rattanak, the son of municipal finance ...

The former director of a Vietnamese-owned rubber firm was sentenced in absentia to two and a half years in prison by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday, and ordered to pay $800,000 in compensation for defrauding his former employer, a court official said yesterday. “The ...

Rights groups and the United Nations yesterday urged the Supreme Court to drop the case against two men widely believed to have been wrongfully convicted of the slaying of unionist Chea Vichea when it convenes this morning. Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun were re-arrested in ...