Cambodian historical opponent Sam Rainsy, in exile in France, is on trial Thursday, September 1 in Paris for defamation after a complaint filed by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, for comments made by the opponent in June 2019 on Facebook.
Co-founder of the National Salvation Party of Cambodia (PSNC), the main opposition party, Sam Rainsy, 73, fought Hun Sen for a long time - in power for 37 years in Cambodia - before going into exile in France where he has lived since 2015 Sam Rainsy, who also has French nationality, is already the subject of numerous trials in Cambodia, where he says he is being prosecuted for political reasons.
In 2019, he had tried, in vain, to return to Cambodia, a project perceived as
"an attempted coup"
by the authorities.
According to the complaint filed in Paris, Sam Rainsy accused Hun Sen of being behind the death in 2008 of Commissioner Hok Lundy - head of the Cambodian national police - killed in the fall of his helicopter.
“Hun Sen assassinated Hok Lundy by means of a bomb placed inside his helicopter causing an explosion during his flight over the province of Svay Rieng, on November 09, 2008. Hun Sen decided to assassinate Hok Lundy because he knew too much about Hun Sen's misdeeds
,” Sam Rainsy said on Facebook.
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Rainsy is also on trial Thursday for another defamation complaint, filed by Dy Vichea, for remarks also made on Facebook in June 2019 by the opponent.
Son of Hok Lundy, Dy Vichea is Deputy Commissioner General of the Cambodian National Police and son-in-law of Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The trial is due to open in Paris at 1:30 p.m. local time (11:30 a.m. GMT).
Contacted Wednesday by AFP, Luc Brossolet, one of Hun Sen and Dy Vichea's lawyers, said he was waiting for the
“court to judge the comments concerned and criticized to be defamatory”
.
For her part, Jessica Finelle, Sam Rainsy's lawyer, told AFP that she expected the court
"to recognize that it was in the general interest for Sam Rainsy to denounce the crimes committed by Hun Sen, who exercises in under a state dictatorship
.
“Sam Rainsy has been persecuted for thirty years by Hun Sen.
The only weapon he has left is his freedom of expression to testify to what he has experienced and to condemn what political opponents and human rights defenders in Cambodia are suffering
,” she added. .
"Sam Rainsy is the victim in his country of a proliferation of procedures, the regime is trying to muzzle him,"
Mathias Chichportich, also Mr. Rainsy's lawyer, told AFP.
“We expect this trial to enshrine Sam Rainsy's right to express his political fight.
This is all the more so as his remarks are based on a solid factual basis.
The court should therefore release him
,” he said.
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The PSNC party had made a breakthrough in the 2013 elections before being disbanded four years later.
Since the 2018 legislative elections, after which Hun Sen's party won all the seats in parliament, results hotly contested, the regime has multiplied arrests and procedures against any dissenting voice.
In June, during a mass trial, dozens of opposition figures were convicted, including Sam Rainsy, sentenced to eight years in prison in absentia.
This sentence is in addition to those to which he had already been sentenced, including 25 and 10 years in prison for trying to overthrow the Prime Minister.
The next elections in Cambodia are scheduled for next July.
Hun Sen will run for a new term.
He wants his eldest son Hun Manet, a general trained in Britain and the United States, to take over one day, but did not give a date for this potential succession.