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Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha has been sentenced to 27 years under house arrest after being found guilty of treason, ending a three-year trial drawn out by COVID-19 and delays to allow government lawyers to find new evidence of the politician\u2019s alleged crimes.<\/p>\n
The judge at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court told the former president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) that he would be banned from politics and voting in elections indefinitely. Nor would he be able to meet anyone outside his family.<\/p>\n
Kem Sokha was arrested in September 2017 without a warrant in a midnight raid on his home and taken to a provincial jail. Denied bail several times before eventually being released under house arrest, the prominent politician was charged with \u201cconspiracy with a foreign power\u201d under article 443 of Cambodia\u2019s criminal code.<\/p>\n
The CNRP was dissolved and the government, under the longtime ruler and Prime Minister Hun Sen, made it a crime to associate with the name or depict its leaders\u2019 images. Without any effective opposition, Hun Sen\u2019s Cambodian People\u2019s Party (CPP) swept the board in national elections in 2018.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Friday\u2019s verdict was announced, the United States ambassador to Cambodia, W Patrick Murphy, tweeted that Washington was \u201cdeeply troubled\u201d by the conviction. Kem Sokha had consistently denied the charges against him, saying he was only trying to win power through the ballot box.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Kem Sokha\u2019s] trial, built on a fabricated conspiracy, was a miscarriage of justice,\u201d Murphy wrote. \u201cInclusive democracy would further the Cambodian people\u2019s aspirations for a prosperous society that respects all voices and rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera\u2019s Tony Cheng, reporting from Bangkok, said Kem Sokha\u2019s guilty verdict did not come as a surprise in a trial that had taken three years to complete and involved charges which had seen the opposition leader either held in detention or under house arrest since 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed very unlikely there was going to be any leniency or certainly any chance of walking out of court today a free man,\u201d Cheng said of the verdict.<\/p>\n
\u201cNonetheless, the 27-year sentence on what, I think most people accept, are very trumped up charges seems very severe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is effectively a life sentence\u201d for the 69-year-old opposition leader, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha has been sentenced to 27 years under house arrest after being found guilty of treason, ending a three-year trial drawn out by COVID-19 and delays to allow government lawyers to find new evidence of the politician\u2019s alleged crimes. The judge at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court told the former president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184371"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184373,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184371\/revisions\/184373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}