The Phnom Penh Post

Defense attorneys for Comrade Duch say they won't ask for any additional investigative work into their client's first case file. Other parties involved with the tribunal are undecided at this point.

"We may or may not ask for more investigation," said Kong Pisey, a lawyer representing several civil parties, on Tuesday. "I need to spend time going through the case."

The Co-Investigating Judges announced last Thursday that they had finished investigations into Duch's first case file. From that point, all parties have 15 days to request further investigative action.

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.