The Phnom Penh Post

In the most recent edition of the Post, Cat Barton examines the question of Ieng Thirith's sanity. The former Democratic Kampuchea social affairs minister is scheduled to go before the court this Wednesday to appeal her pre-trial detention.

Thirith's lawyer claims he has Thai-language medical documents that prove his client is not mentally fit to stand trial.

Given some of the defendants' advanced ages, the question of mental competence will no doubt continue to plague the tribunal. The Pre-Trial Chamber rejected Nuon Chea's request last month for an independent psychiatric evaluation. According to press accounts, Nuon has claimed his "thinking is unclear" and "his brain [is] not normal," the Open Society Justice Initiative reported.

The Co-Investigating Judges have finished investigations into Comrade Duch's case file, the court announced Friday. They are now working to issue a final closing order in July, determining whether Duch should go to trial and, if so, on what charges.

"It is hoped that any trial of Duch on charges raised in the Co-Prosecutors' Initial Submissions could commence at the beginning of the last quarter of 2008," reads the first edition of the new monthly Court Report.

Court Spokesman Reach Sambath said Friday he "couldn't predict" what month a trial might begin.

Comrade Duch's return to the Killing Fields in late February made international headlines from London to Delhi. Reporters described how the notorious Tuol Sleng chief wept over the mass graves he once oversaw, and knelt before the trees soldiers formerly used as bludgeons for babies' heads.

When an independent report declared the tribunal "robust" and ready for future business last month, court administration called the new review a vindication.

But the Open Society Justice Initiative says it wasn't enough.

In a report released May 14, the watchdog group calls for further probes into staffing at the ECCC, focusing on allegations that employees have had to "kickback" a portion of their salaries to higher-ups. The recommendation came under the "Assessment of Human Resource Practices" section of OSJI's monthly update on court activities.

The Cambodia Tribunal Monitor recently posted interviews about the ECCC with surviving Nuremberg prosecutors.

The 15-minute clip is worth watching. Highlights include:

* Description of the origin of "war crimes" as a concept.

Tribunal Director of Administration Sean Visoth assured an ECCC working group last week that the court will soon overcome its daunting translation backlog.

"The judicial offices are taking a number of ameliorative measures," he told "Friends of the ECCC" during a May 8 meeting called primarily to review the court's budget.

Those measures include requiring all documents be filed in Khmer and at least one of the court's other two official languages, as well as clarifying which filings must be made in all three languages.

The only female defendant currently detained at the ECCC will go before the Pre-Trial Chamber May 21. During the Khmer Rouge years, Ieng Thirith was Minister of Social Affairs and Head of Democratic Kampuchea's Red Cross Society. Her older sister, Khieu Ponnary, married Pol Pot. The Pre-Trial Chamber recently approved conjugal visits between Thirith and her husband Ieng Sary, who is also in detention at the ECCC.

I moved back to Cambodia in March from Tampa Bay, Fla., an area jokingly called "God's waiting room" by many in the United States. While the region's population has skewed somewhat younger over the last couple decades, it remains a destination for retirees and baby boomer "snowbirds" - those who migrate to Florida seasonally as weather worsens in their hometowns.

This backdrop probably made the transition to Cambodia - Tampa Bay's demographic opposite - even more striking. Cambodia often feels like a country full of children. Packs of young people, many raising each other, throng Phnom Penh's streets and the countryside's villages. Teenagers and twenty-somethings linger outside the capital city's various universities and provide a regular clientele for new hangouts like Lucky Seven.

* The court has scheduled Ieng Sary's appeal against provisional detention for June 30.

Memorials are underway to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the Holodomor, and a political debate is raging.

Ukraine wants the 1932-33 famine recognized as "genocide." Russia, while acknowledging that millions died as a result of Soviet agricultural policies, insists the Ukrainian people were not directly targeted. Soviet citizens of numerous ethnicities and nationalities died during those years from starvation and related illnesses.