He seemed to be no more than a small-town accountant with big ideas, an exile from his tragic homeland and full of grandiose dreams of revolution. But yesterday a Cambodian-born man was imprisoned for life in the United States for inciting a failed coup against Cambodia’s Prime Minister, Hun Sen.
Chhun Yasith, 53, wept as he was sentenced for criminal conspiracy and engaging in a military expedition against a nation with which the United States is at peace. The judge expressed sympathy with Chhun, who as a young man had watched his father being beheaded by the Khmer Rouge.
“I don’t think Mr Chhun is an evil human being,” Judge Dean Pregerson said in Los Angeles. “I think he’s had a tragic life — and had the misfortune of being born in a place where terrible things were happening.”
The crime at the heart of the case took place ten years ago when dozens of armed men stormed government buildings in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. At least four people died in the attack but it failed in its goal of ousting Hun Sen, a former member of the Khmer Rouge who has been Cambodia’s authoritarian leader since 1998.
More than a hundred people were tried and imprisoned for the attack in Cambodia. But the man who openly boasted of organising it was Chhun, the head of an obscure group calling itself the Cambodian Freedom Fighters. Like millions of Cambodians, his life was blighted by the coming to power in 1975 of the Khmer Rouge, an extreme Maoist organisation that attempted to abolish the middle class and drove the urban population to work in the fields.
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The Khmer Rouge was driven from power in 1979 by neighbouring Vietnam, and three years later Chhun arrived as a refugee in the United States, where he became a naturalised citizen. He was active in opposition politics but grew disillusioned with the prospects for peaceful change and founded the CFF in 1998, after Hun Sen became Prime Minister.
He had supporters in the Cambodian community and senior members of the Republican Party. According to the Los Angeles prosecutors, he travelled to Thailand and recruited exiled Cambodians for his revolutionary army.
He ordered what were referred to as “popcorn” attacks on 291 small targets, such as karaoke bars and cafés, as well as the coup attempt on November 24, 2000, codenamed Operation Volcano.
The CFF, armed with grenades, assault rifles and rocket launchers, attacked buildings, the Ministry of Defence, the council of ministers and the headquarters of the military police, but were quickly quelled and the expected uprising among ordinary Cambodians never happened.
Chhun remained safely across the border in Thailand during the coup attempt and was convicted in absentia in Phnom Penh the following year for conspiracy, terrorism and membership of an illegal armed group.
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But it was not until after the September 11 attacks in 2001 that US authorities investigated him. Chhun’s supporters have said that his prosecution was a cynical quid pro quo for Cambodian help in the War against Terror, especially against the South-East Asian terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah.
“He was a sacrificial lamb to make sure everything went well in southeast Asia,” his lawyer, Richard Callahan said. “\ was misguided and naive in its execution but it was not misguided and naive in its intent.”
Cambodia’s Foreign Minister, Hor Namhong, said: “He is a terrorist and we welcome the decision taken by the US court to sentence him to life in prison. Terrorism is the main threat to human beings, not only in the United States but also in Cambodia.”