Court finds former Phnom Penh police chief free of extortion charge

World
UPDATED: 17:15, March 21, 2007
Court finds former Phnom Penh police chief free of extortion charge


The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday found Heng Peov, former
Phnom Penh police chief, and his associate free of the charge that
they extorted 11,000 U.S. dollars from a South Korean Man.

Presiding judge Iv Kim Sri said that there was not enough evidence to
say that Heng Peov ordered Meng Say in 2005 to take the money from Li
Kyong Hor in return for stop of police investigation of his alleged
crime of human trafficking.

Prosecutor Sok Roeurn charged Heng Peov and his assistant of extorting
the money, after they found that Li Kyong Hor and his staff members
had allegedly organized illegal marriage for Cambodian girls and South
Korean men.

At the court, Heng Peov denied the charge, saying that "I didn't
receive any money and didn't order my associates to extort money from
all the South Korean men, either. Instead, I myself helped them on
this case and I also saved the face of our country."

In 2005 as Phnom Penh police chief, he ordered to release Li Kyong Hor
and his staff members as well as some Cambodian girls, whose mothers
allowed them to marry South Korean men but therefore incurred
complaints from the South Korean Embassy, he said.

It might be one of his associates, Yun Yet, who had deep and serious
conflicts with him, that extorted the money, he said, while repeatedly
asking to bring him to the court for confrontation face to face.

Yut Yet was fired from the police after Heng Peov was arrested over a
variety of charges.

Muong Sokun, lawyer for Meng Say and former chief of Phnom Penh
police's anti-human trafficking office, said that Li Kyong Hor once
recognized from the photo that Yut Yet took the money from him.

"It is not my client who extorted the money from Li," he added.

In addition, the court is still to give the verdict against Heng Peov
and his associates on March 22 over their illegal detention of a woman
in police cell, and on March 27 over their shooting of an electricity
official who then became disabled for life. In December 2006, Heng
Peov, then 49 years old, was sentenced by the court in absentia to 18
years in jail for masterminding the murder of a Phnom Penh court
judge, Sok Sethamony, in 2004.

He was later deported from Malaysia back to Cambodia and is imprisoned
in Prey Sor Prison at the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

The one legged man served as police chief of Phnom Penh until late
2005. Then he was promoted to under-secretary of state at the Interior
Ministry and personal adviser for Prime Minister Hun Sen. Before the
investigation started against him, he managed to fled overseas and
stayed in Singapore and Malaysia in tandem.

Source: Xinhua

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