Cambodia’s plans to try captured Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok in a military court were legally unsatisfactory and the trial would not be fair, Amnesty International said in a report released Thursday.

“A domestic trial will not be fair, cannot reveal the truth and does not serve the principles of justice and accountability,” the rights group declared. “Cambodia deserves better than a show trial, and this chance will not come again.”

In its report, ‘No solution to impunity: the case of Ta Mok’, Amnesty contended that the judicial process in Cambodia cannot be been regarded as fair, and likely would deliver a verdict that would be dismissed as partisan.

Instead, it argued, the United Nations should push for a UN tribunal in a neutral country.

“Amnesty International is concerned that the likely trial of the suspect Ta Mok in the Military Court of Cambodia will fall short of international standards for a fair trial, and will prove no solution to the problem of impunity in Cambodia,” Amnesty said.

It cited several breaches of the necessary requirements of a fair trial that have already taken place, including the labelling of the suspect as “criminal Ta Mok” on Cambodian radio and the plan to try Ta Mok – who was not a member of Cambodia’s armed forces – in a military tribunal.

Many human rights groups were worried that the Cambodian government intended to focus on the trial of Ta Mok to draw attention away from plans to set up a UN tribunal on all Khmer Rouge war crimes.

In February, a three-member panel led by Ninian Stephen warned that Cambodia’s legal system was not able to conduct fair domestic trials of Khmer Rouge suspects, and that the United Nations should not support them. Instead, the panel said, the best chance for a fair trial was through a UN tribunal, possibly in a neutral south- east Asian country.

“The Cambodian people must have confidence in the fairness of the process. Otherwise they will regard this as a partisan political exercise,” the Stephen panel reported.

“The group has reached the opinion that the Cambodian public does not, at the present time, have such confidence in the judiciary.”

Yet Cambodia’s plans for a domestic trial increased on Mar. 6, when Ta Mok – whose real name is Chhit Choeun – was captured near the border with Thailand.

Following the death last year of longtime Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, Ta Mok became the most prominent official in the movement, which is blamed for killing some two million Cambodians during Pol Pot’s 1975-79 regime.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen – who resisted trials of other Khmer Rouge leaders who laid down their arms – immediately declared that Ta Mok would be tried for crimes against humanity, and asked for UN and international assistance.

His government also offered to allow foreign judges to sit in a Cambodian court for the proceedings.

Yet while Hun Sen insisted on a domestic trial for Ta Mok, he told UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a letter last month that Cambodia was exploring the possibility of a South Africa-style “truth commission” to explore other Khmer Rouge crimes.

In Ta Mok’s case, the Cambodian government declared in a statement that “the culprit is a Cambodian national, the victims are Cambodians, the place of the commission of the crimes is also in Cambodia; therefore the trial by a Cambodian court is fully in conformity with the legal process.”

The United Nations has not issued any public evaluation of the credibility of a domestic trial. One UN official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said last month that “the Cambodian system is unlikely to meet international standards of justice”.

In its report, Amnesty scorned the disparity between the attempt to try Ta Mok and the treatment of other former Khmer Rouge leaders who had cut deals with the government to halt their forces’ fighting.

Ieng Sary, former foreign minister under Pol Pot, defected in 1996 and was granted amnesty by Hun Sen and then-First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh. Ieng Sary “was allowed by the government to live in Pailin in northwest Cambodia, in a semi- autonomous zone, controlled by his supporters,” Amnesty noted.

Similarly, the group pointed out, two senior officials who defected last year – Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea – “were housed in a luxury hotel at the government’s expense, and Hun Sen told the press that ‘we should dig a hole and bury the past’,” the report added.