Crime and law enforcement

Greg Thomas Fryett, a British businessman arrested by the Anti-Corruption Unit last year for alleged links to a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, went on trial on Friday at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court. ...

A bloody slingshot battle broke out in Kompong Speu province yesterday when villagers who have sold their land to a private company defended the firm’s machinery as it attempted to bulldoze the homes of neighbors who have refused to sell. The dispute, in Thpong district’s Ya ...

On the side of a well-trafficked street in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district, a man with a razor blade bends over a small rectangle of sheet metal overlaid with a vinyl stencil. As letters and numbers are lifted away, the plate begins to take on a ...

A village chief in Siem Reap who was sentenced on Tuesday to a year in prison for levelling private property to construct an office building will retain his position – at least until his appeal hearing is over, a commune official said yesterday. ...

Two men, including a local official, were sentenced to a year in prison on Tuesday for clearing privately owned land to construct an office building in Siem Reap nearly two years ago, their lawyer said yesterday. ...

Detainees and prisoners continue to be administered electric shocks, beaten unconscious and even smothered by plastic bags, with 49 new allegations of torture or abuse at the hands of authorities this year, according to rights group Licadho, which says in a report released Wednesday that ...

An ongoing land dispute may become more than just an embittered ordeal for three Khmer Krom villagers after officials requested yesterday that a Takeo court levy them huge fines. According to representatives from Borei Choslar district’s Sangkum Meanchey village, they are only farming barren land that ...

Union leader Ath Thorn has been granted an Appeal Court appearance on July 1, in which he will argue against conditions that required him to pay $25,000 bail over an ongoing court case. The Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU) president is due to ...

Arrest, detention and even an upcoming trial can’t sway 68 Khmer Krom families faced with eviction to give up a bitter land dispute over a bird sanctuary in Takeo province. After being charged in April with illegally occupying state land, three representatives from Sangkum Meanchey village ...

Nine karaoke parlors in Pur Senchey district were closed indefinitely Monday after an early morning clash between employees of the clubs, district governor Hem Darith said. Mr. Darith said a large group of men working for the different clubs got into a violent scuffle using rocks, ...

Thai authorities have arrested and are preparing to try 13 Cambodian migrant workers who were allegedly caught with fake stamps on their work papers as they tried to return home, Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong confirmed on Friday. The government also announced a plan to subsidize ...

The families of four people from Pailin province’s Krinh village who have been incarcerated since March for allegedly living on state land are calling for their release. Fifty-year-old Nheb Nharn said that he and his wife, Om Som Ath, had lived on the land in Stung ...

U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi met with representatives of the country’s businesses and employers Thursday for talks that focused on the protection of workers’ rights and measures that can be taken to ensure that strained industrial relations do not once again erupt into violence. In ...

The consequences and containment of violence cost the Cambodian economy over $1.5 billion in 2013, just under 10 per cent of its estimated GDP for the period, according to the Institute for Economics & Peace’s Global Peace Index released yesterday. According to IEP executive chairman ...

A high-level agricultural official in Kampong Speu province has been charged with stealing thousands of dollars from paddy rice farmers after promising to deliver them land titles in January 2013, a rights group representative and a court prosecutor said yesterday. Cher Pich, 44, deputy director of ...

After a third day of questioning, during which the plaintiff’s story allegedly changed, the head of Cambodia’s largest independent garment union is in the dark as to where his case stands. Investigating judge Chea Sok Heang yesterday did not set a date for further questioning and ...

The leader of Cambodia’s largest independent garment union is due to appear in court this afternoon for a third round of pretrial questioning over a case stemming from a strike that ended more than six months ago. Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU) president ...

Prey Sar prison officials on Friday set fire to 1,705 mobile phones that had been confiscated from inmates there over the past three years. Yin Kun, deputy chief of Prey Sar’s Correctional Center 1, said that the public burning of phones would remind prisoners that communicating ...

A 100-page set of guidelines for the legal protection of the rights of women and children was launched by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Phnom Penh on Thursday in a bid to address shortfalls in how the judicial system handles cases such as rape, ...

Mondulkiri provincial police charged four men with illegal logging and immigration crimes after they allegedly caught the suspects collecting wood in O’Raing district. Vietnamese nationals Orng Minh Chhung, 30; Le Vantieng, 38; Tvan Taktech, 33; and Thvang Vanthai, 36, were arrested while gathering freshly cut pieces ...

The number of inmates who died in the country’s prisons in the first quarter of the year dipped to nine from 15 during the same period last year, a rights group and the prison department said. From January to April, nine prisoners—five men and four women—reportedly ...

Cambodia has been cited as one of 10 countries in which torture and extrajudicial killings are common, in a submission made this week by the Hong Kong-based Asia Legal Resource Center to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. ...

Twenty-three labor activists are free from jail, but Freedom Park remains closed to the public. The park is a government-sanctioned place of protest, but it was closed after opposition demonstrations there in April. Phnom Penh spokesman Long Dimanche said there is “no threat” of protests ...

Four Cambodian nationals who had been incarcerated in Thailand for logging and illegally crossing the border were released on Monday after completing their prison terms, officials said yesterday. Touch Ra, deputy director of the Chaom-Sa Ngaom international border checkpoint in Oddar Meanchey province, said two of ...