PM’s bodyguard offers testimony at KRT

[geovalin]

Erin Handley

A bodyguard for Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday told the Khmer Rouge tribunal how he jumped into the Mekong River to escape execution during his testimony on the oppression of the Cham Muslim people during the reign of the Pol Pot regime.

Van Mat, 62, said that he drove his commune chief to a meeting in late 1978, only to overhear that Cham and other “traitors” in the Eastern Zone were to be purged.

“Angkar gave the instruction to smash 100 per cent of the Cham,” he said. Ke Pok whom the witness said had also been called “Pol Pok”, and who was later made a brigadier-general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces after defecting from the Khmer Rouge presided over the meeting, the court heard.

read more: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/pms-bodyguard-offers-testimony-krt