EWMI NEWS:
SEPTEMBER 2009
LEGAL AID LAWYERS REDUCE ILLEGAL DETENTIONS IN CAMBODIA

Kandal Province, Cambodia. In October 2005, Roeun Moeun was arrested on suspicion of stealing a cell phone worth $15. He was charged with robbery and put in pre-trial detention in Kandal Provincial Prison. In October 2008, three years later, lawyers working for USAID-funded Legal Aid of Cambodia (LAC) discovered Moeun sitting in prison, still waiting to be tried.

The LAC lawyers pressed the Kandal Court to process Moeun’s case. Because there was no evidence of his guilt, the charges were dismissed and he was released, a free man. Why was Moeun detained so long? The prosecutor found that there was no case file or investigation record for him and as a result he was not tried earlier with other suspects in the case.

LAC’s intervention in Moeun’s case came about through a USAID-funded pilot program designed to provide legal representation to poor people held in the Kandal Provincial Prison. In over two years of operation the program has achieved remarkable success in reducing the length of illegal detentions.

Of 210 cases that LAC has handled, more than half of their clients were already being held in excessive detention before lawyers got involved. There were numerous cases like Moeun’s where people had been detained for long periods of time without being tried, including children and people arrested for minor offences.

However, once the detainee had a LAC lawyer, the case was almost always resolved quickly. In most cases, LAC clients were brought to trial or freed in less than three months – a significant achievement considering the length of the excessive detentions. Most importantly, the LAC case statistics show just how important it is for people who have been arrested to have access to legal representation.

The problem of excessive detention in Cambodia is not limited to Kandal Province. Hundreds of people are held in prisons throughout Cambodia well past legally allowable time periods, waiting for their day in court. Others remain in prison after serving their sentence, waiting to be released.

Cambodian government officials understand the problem exists and have expressed a desire to do something about it. Recently, the Minister of Justice His Excellency Ang Vong Vathana ordered Cambodia’s prosecutors to gather statistics concerning the incidence of excessive detention in their provinces.

USAID plans to assist the government to reduce the problem of excessive detention by creating a new “Right to Release” initiative in 2010. The initiative will be part of USAID’s larger Program on Rights and Justice being implemented by the East-West Management Institute (EWMI-PRAJ). It will include assistance to the courts and the Ministry of Justice to generate comprehensive statistics on excessive detention, and will likely include an expansion of LAC’s legal aid pilot to courts besides Kandal.

“This initiative will not only help Cambodian courts do a better job of tracking individuals caught in the system, it will give ordinary people their freedom back and let them get on with their lives,” says Herb Bowman, Chief of Party for EWMI-PRAJ.