As a treason trial against former opposition leader Kem Sokha resumed on Wednesday after a delay of nearly two years, lawyers attacked each other over the postponement, while the defendant said he had believed a reconciliation was in the cards.
After almost two years of break, VOD looks back at coverage of former opposition leader Kem Sokha’s trial for alleged attempts to topple the government with foreign assistance.
Nearly two years after the suspension of hearings, former CNRP president Kem Sokha will head to a Phnom Penh court in January to attend his treason trial.
Kem Sokha’s comments stirred a flurry of speculation and commentary online, with armchair political analysts in and outside the country trying to make sense of what this meant for the CNRP — once the most credible political threat to the CPP’s stranglehold on power.
“Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha are not the same person,” Sokha’s Facebook post said, asking that Rainsy and his colleagues stop using him to push their campaigns.
Kem Sokha has been looking to sell his Phnom Penh villa since 2020, said a close colleague, with plans to move to the city’s outskirts or to a different province.
Kem Sokha, Cambodia’s ex-opposition leader still awaiting the resumption of his treason trial, has put his six-bedroom Toul Kork district home on the market for $2.4 million.
A former vice president of the outlawed opposition CNRP has broken with the strident wing of the party in asking the government to be reinstated to politics this week, a course of action that a party co-founder has previously criticized as effective betrayal.
CNRP president Kem Sokha can get his wish for a speedy trial if he goes back to jail, as the courts are prioritizing cases for those detained in the country’s overcrowded prisons, Justice Ministry spokesperson Chin Malin said on Friday.
Former opposition leader Kem Sokha’s trial for treason, now suspended for 10 months, should be resumed and further delays avoided, his lawyers said in an appeal to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.
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