Law and judiciary

Long-awaited regional appeal courts, intended to ease a logjam of pending cases caused by inmate transportation issues, will be unveiled in three provinces next year, Ministry of Justice officials said yesterday. ...

The Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia on Tuesday wrote to local rights group Adhoc accusing its head of monitoring, Ny Chakrya, of flouting legal practice by ordering the NGO’s lawyers to hand over for examination all documents relating to cases they defend. ...

Concerned Koh Kong residents, joined by environmental activists from the campaign group Mother Nature, began an ambitious protest last weekend in the province’s Andong Teuk commune. ...

When police arrested real estate tycoon Sok Bun earlier this month, it seemed to be in response to an outcry on social media, which showed closed-circuit footage of him beating a famous TV actress at a restaurant in the capital. It was a rare arrest, ...

An activist with Cambodia’s opposition party on Tuesday accused a former senior official with the country’s intelligence organization of making death threats against him, causing him to fear for his life, and has called on local authorities and civil society groups to investigate the incident. ...

Implementation of the new Land Traffic Law that was passed in December will officially begin on January 1, an official said Monday, with police focusing on the leading causes of traffic accidents, starting with speeding. ...

Traffic cops will personally pocket 70 per cent of the fines they give out from January 2016 onwards, when the country’s new traffic law is implemented and penalties will rise five-fold.The incentive was announced yesterday by the deputy director of the Interior Ministry’s Public Order ...

A Cambodian man was left dead after a group of fishermen from Kampot province clashed with Vietnamese fishermen while at sea on Sunday evening, according to officials. ...

Three factory workers shot more than three years ago by a town governor who remains at large have come to Phnom Penh to ask Prime Minister Hun Sen to take action in their case, given the recent success of the premier’s call to arrest a ...

Cambodia’s strongman premier Monday brushed off recent criticism over a string of lengthy jail sentences handed to opposition activists, adding that there would be no political deal for their release.​ ...

Kem Sokha, acting president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), visited this morning his 11 activists who were sentenced to jail from 7-20 years . ...

Three victims injured in a public shooting in early 2012 have called on the prime minister to intervene and find the former governor convicted of the crime. ...

Opposition lawmaker Um Sam An has been suspended from the next 15 sessions of parliament and will have his salary cut as punishment for critical comments he posted to Facebook earlier this month, according to a statement issued Friday by the National Assembly’s Sec­retariat General. ...

An NGO director claimed Sunday that authorities in Svay Rieng province blocked a group he was leading from visiting homes they had rebuilt near the Vietnamese border in Romeas Hek district. ...

Authorities in Phnom Penh on Sunday arrested and released six people dressed in prison uniforms and chained together by their legs for protesting outside the National Assembly against a recently approved law that threatens to muzzle NGOs critical of the government ...

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court’s decision and refused to release on bail Lay Huong, the alleged mastermind of a plot to kill a government minister’s wife. ...

Six demonstrators were briefly detained as they protested against the recent passage of a law under which critics say the law will hinder the ability of NGOs to operate in the nation. ...

The United States is closely monitoring the case of the 11 CNRP activists convicted of insurrection arising out of July 2014 protests in Phnom Penh, according to the U.S. Embassy’s statement received today. ...

Two women were charged with extortion and placed in Kandal Provincial Prison on Wednesday for accepting $4,500 from the factory where they worked and had recently set up a union, a court official said. ...

A former two-star military general who confessed to murdering his wife and daughter, stuffing their bodies in a cooler and having two relatives dump them in the forest was sentenced to life in prison by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday. ...

A district police chief in Kompong Chhnang province was on Thursday suspended amid an investigation into claims that he raped a high-school student in his office before threatening to murder her family if she told anyone about the assault. ...

A deal signed Thursday with the China Law Society will give Justice Ministry officials access to scholarships at Chinese universities and see Beijing fund the construction of a legal research center in Cambodia, ministry spokesman Chin Malin said. ...

As outrage still reverberates among opposition supporters over Tuesday’s conviction of 11 Cambodia National Rescue Party activists on “insurrection” charges, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party has warned that questioning the verdict will imperil the ongoing “culture of dialogue”. ...

An angry mob of hundreds surrounded a police station in Takeo province for nine hours on Wednesday night and demanded that an alleged organ harvester accused of kidnapping a 6-year-old girl be handed over for summary execution, officials said Thursday. ...