Law and judiciary

Cambodian government has revoked licenses of economic land concessions of three companies in Koh Kong, Preah Sihanouk and Kampong Speu provinces, according to sub-decree. The sub-decree dated October 7 said 1,635 hectares of economic land concessions have  been taken back from Vimean Seila LTD, Vatanak Co., ...

A French non-governmental organization (NGO) director had been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing seven boys, police and anti-pedophilia agent said on Thursday. Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), a child protection NGO, assisted the police in an investigation that led to the arrest, the police ...

The 200 Cambodian families suing U.K. firm Tate & Lyle in London over sugar the company has bought from a pair of local plantations accused of stealing their land have switched lawyers, delaying the start of the trial, which was expected to start this month. ...

A provincial military police commander was named yesterday by a major conservationist group as the alleged owner of a huge haul of illegal rosewood confiscated in Kampong Speu province this week. At around 3 a.m. on Tuesday, Wildlife Alliance rangers intercepted a truck carrying 12.5 cubic ...

Kompong Chhnang provincial police on Tuesday arrested one of six suspects wanted for the murder of a journalist in Cholkiri district nearly nine months ago, police said Wednesday. Suon Chan, 44, who worked for the infrequently published Meakea newspaper, died on the way to the hospital ...

The wife of slain journalist Taing Try filed a complaint with the Kratie Provincial Court on Tuesday urging judicial officials to bring charges against two more men, including a local military police chief, for her husband’s murder on Sunday. ...

The Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear an appeal filed by three garment workers shot by disgraced Bavet town governor Chhouk Bandith during a 2012 demonstration, since Bandith’s lawyer did not turn up to court. Bandith was sentenced to 18 months in prison in June last ...

The Kratie Provincial Court on Tuesday brought murder charges against three men arrested for the killing on Sunday morning of 49-year-old journalist Taing Try in Snuol district and sent them to the provincial prison to await trial, a court official said. ...

Representatives of an ethnic Tompoun community in Ratanakkiri province filed two separate complaints with local authorities last week accusing a group of five environment department officials of extortion after the officials allegedly caught the minority villagers trapping illegally in a wildlife sanctuary and asked for ...

The three men arrested for the murder of 49-year-old journalist Taing Try in Kratie province on Sunday morning confessed to murdering the reporter after he threatened to tell authorities about their illegal logging activities, a police official said. ...

The lawyer of a 70-year-old widow whose land was stolen by a cousin of Prime Minister Hun Sen, Dy Proem, has filed a letter to the National Assembly’s human rights committee asking the body to help speed up the long-stalled case. Dy Proem was sentenced ...

He may be just the police chief of Battambang, a languid riverside town in western Cambodia, but, recently, people have taken to calling Brig Gen Sar Theth the $7 million man. On Sept. 19, Brig Gen Theth’s officers tracked three Thai men in a pickup truck ...

Police in Cambodia say they have arrested three people after a journalist investigating illegal logging was shot dead. Taing Try was killed on Sunday at a logging site in Kratie province, where he had gone with several reporters. Two years ago a prominent environmentalist was also shot ...

NGO workers interviewing evictees in Oddar Meanchey province said police pulled their car over without cause on Saturday and tried to seize one of their cameras, the third reported case of authorities in the area harassing the group’s staff in the past month. ...

A 49-year-old journalist reportedly investigating illegal logging in Kratie province was shot dead early Sunday morning. Within hours, police arrested three men—a commune police chief, a military police officer and a Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) soldier—for the murder, officials said. Taing Try, who contributed to ...

Cambodia recorded 3,638 cases of road accidents in the first nine months of 2014, killing at least 1,630 people, according to a report of the National Committee for Road Traffic Safety on Friday. ...

The number of drug arrests, including those of foreign nationals, is up this year, but total drug seizures are barely over a third of what they were last year, say the National Police. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Thursday that civil servants making less than 800,000 riel, or about $200, a month will be exempt from paying income taxes, just days after the Finance Ministry sent a very different message to the country’s garment workers. ...

Cambodia’s Ministries of Labour and Tourism on Wednesday jointly launched a new regulation for protecting the occupational safety, health and labour rights of entertainment workers. “The regulation aims to improve working conditions, occupational safety and health rules of entertainment service enterprises, establishments and companies,”said a ...

A British lawyer has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate “widespread and systematic” land grabbing in Cambodia over the past 14 years as a crime against humanity. The complaint filed in The Hague yesterday by lawyer Richard Rogers, who is officially representing 10 Cambodian victims, ...

Weakness of the court system is a major obstacle in the fight against corruption which hampers the country’s development, a corruption expert said today. Chairman of Transparency International-Cambodia, Mr. Preap Kol said that because of the poor court system, it hard to get rid of corruption. ...

Hy Narin, the Meanchey district police chief arrested by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) on Tuesday, was questioned on Thursday by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court over allegations that he stole more than $600,000 from the state and its citizens during his eight years as police ...

Vietnamese nationals were deported en masse this week from Svay Rieng province, with 142 illegal migrants sent back across the border in a single day, as Cambodia’s nationwide census of foreigners continues, officials said yesterday. General Sok Phal, director of the Interior Ministry’s Immigration Department, said ...

Pailin provincial authorities are searching for a suspect who allegedly commissioned the excavation of a gold mine on land the protection of which is funded by the foundation of American actress Angelina Jolie. Provincial environmental police are holding three men at a spot where they were ...