Torture still endemic in Cambodian legal system, US ambassador says
Posted : Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:52:02 GMT
Author : DPA
Phnom Penh - More than a quarter of Cambodian court defendants
surveyed re****ted being tortured or coerced into confession and
ordinary people lacked faith in the justice system, US ambassador to
Cambodia Joseph Mussomeli said Thursday. Speaking at the launch of an
annual judicial review by local anti- corruption organization the
Centre for Social Development (CSD), the ambassador said that although
the figures showed some improvement, the country's notoriously fraught
system was still poor.
"The CSD annual re****t makes clear what goes on inside Cambodia's
courtrooms still falls short of what can be considered procedural
justice," he said.
"CSD re****ted that over 25 per cent of defendants appearing in court
claimed to have been tortured or coerced into giving confessions. I
note that this ... is the same as re****ted last year, indicating there
has been no significant change."
The Court Watch Project by CSD has come to be viewed as the definitive
annual survey of developments in the fledgling Cambodian judicial
system since it was launched in 2003.
CSD, which receives funding from a number of donors including Germany
and the US, interviewed a wide range of judicial officials, witnesses,
lawyers and defendants between October 2006 and September 2007.
Judicial reform of the notoriously corrupt Cambodian system has been
earmarked by donors to the aid-dependant nation as a key factor in the
country's development after 30 years of civil war.
The re****t outlined a number of concerns, including poor training of
the judiciary, bribery, torture, underfunding, a lack of independence
and frequent pre-trial detention of prisoners for terms exceeding the
legal limit of six months.
"Not all the news is bad," Mussomeli said, but "on balance ... there
remains a good deal to be done before the people of the judicial
system will earn the trust of the people of Cambodia."
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