Trial of former Khmer Rouge members hears of British mine-clearing expert's final days
A British mine-clearing expert who was murdered in Cambodia and his remains burned to hide the evidence was killed on the orders of the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, a court was told yesterday.
The trial of five former Khmer Rouge cadres accused of the kidnap and murder of Christopher Howes in 1996 heard that the communist leader had a blanket policy of killing foreigners on the grounds that they supported the Cambodian government.
Howes, 37, was shot within days of his capture while leading a mine-clearance team north of Siem Reap - home to the Angkor Wat temples - after his abductors lulled him into a false sense of security by giving him fruit and a mattress for the night. His interpreter, Huon Hourth, who was among the 30-strong team from the British-based Mines Advisory Group, was murdered a day earlier when he was deemed "no longer necessary" because one of the accused spoke English.
The disappearance of the former British army engineer from Backwell, near Bristol, and Hourth remained a mystery for more than two years as Cambodia's civil war was in its death throes. But an investigation by a Scotland Yard team working with Cambodian police declared that Howes had been murdered after tests on bone fragments found in a fire.
The evidence collected from witnesses in the two years after Howes' disappearance was presented at the Phnom Penh court yesterday by a former Metropolitan police anti-terrorism officer, Mike Dickson, now an adviser to the UN-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal.
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
The trial of five former Khmer Rouge cadres accused of the kidnap and murder of Christopher Howes in 1996 heard that the communist leader had a blanket policy of killing foreigners on the grounds that they supported the Cambodian government.
Howes, 37, was shot within days of his capture while leading a mine-clearance team north of Siem Reap - home to the Angkor Wat temples - after his abductors lulled him into a false sense of security by giving him fruit and a mattress for the night. His interpreter, Huon Hourth, who was among the 30-strong team from the British-based Mines Advisory Group, was murdered a day earlier when he was deemed "no longer necessary" because one of the accused spoke English.
The disappearance of the former British army engineer from Backwell, near Bristol, and Hourth remained a mystery for more than two years as Cambodia's civil war was in its death throes. But an investigation by a Scotland Yard team working with Cambodian police declared that Howes had been murdered after tests on bone fragments found in a fire.
The evidence collected from witnesses in the two years after Howes' disappearance was presented at the Phnom Penh court yesterday by a former Metropolitan police anti-terrorism officer, Mike Dickson, now an adviser to the UN-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal.