A co-investigating judge at the Khmer Rouge tribunal has renewed an arrest warrant for Case 003 suspect and former naval commander Meas Muth after overturning a request from the defence that an earlier warrant be rescinded.
In a series of documents declassified by the court at the defence’s request, Muth’s attorneys Ang Udom and Michael Karnavas argue that a warrant for their client’s arrest issued in December of 2014 is invalid because it was issued unilaterally by judge Mark Harmon, without the support of his national counterpart You Bunleng.
What’s more, they argue in a March filing, given that Muth has already been charged in absentia, the December warrant is “superfluous”.
In a response dated June 5, however, Harmon offers a different reading of court regulations, and counters that he was within his rights issuing a warrant unilaterally.
That said, he adds, “I will no longer entertain submissions on the authority of a single Co-Investigating Judge that ignore the applicable law and existing jurisprudence on this issue”.
He goes on to say that the argument that the December warrant was moot had been itself mooted by a new arrest warrant, issued on June 4.
In its initial request, the Muth defence also called for the declassification of “MEAS Muth’s Urgent Request for a Stay of Execution of the Arrest Warrant Issued on 4 June 2015”, but that request did not appear among the declassified documents yesterday.
