The delay in the French trial of Cambodian generals Hing Bun Heang and Huy Piseth for their alleged role in the lethal 1997 grenade attack in Phnom Penh sheds light on the workings of French diplomacy.
The grenade attack on a protest march led by Cambodian opposition politician Sam Rainsy on March 30, 1997, killed at least 16 people and left over 100 wounded.
The case has come to court in France following a complaint from Sam Rainsy, who has dual French and Cambodian nationality, and his wife Saumura Tioulong. Sam Rainsy, who now lives in exile in Paris, says that he was the target of the attack, though he escaped unhurt.
The French courts in 2020 issued arrest warrants for Hing Bun Heang and Huy Piseth, who were Hun Sen’s senior bodyguards at the time of the attack. Sam Rainsy as a civil plaintiff argues that they were the real organizers. Neither of the defendants was present in court in Paris for the trial, and there were no defense lawyers present.
The proceedings opened on March 20 and continued until March 22. The court decided on March 22 that further investigation is needed before the trial can continue. The arrest warrants for Hing Bun Heang and Huy Piseth were maintained, as the court set a deadline of one year to obtain more information.
Sam Rainsy told the court that Hing Bun Heang and Huy Piseth were the only possible organizers of the attack. The protest march was authorized by the ministry of the interior, the first time that it had ever authorized one of Sam Rainsy’s protest marches.
Hun Sen’s security forces were out in force for the small march of 200 people. The men who threw the grenades were able to flee behind the military line towards their nearby barracks, and pursuing crowds were blocked from chasing them. Photos taken by journalists 15-20 minutes after the explosions show that no one was helping the victims. Sam Rainsy told the court that for at least an hour after the explosions, the soldiers prevented the victims from being taken to hospital.
Pre-trial investigations in the French legal system are much more important than in countries such as the United States and United Kingdom, where the trial itself establishes the facts of the case. So it was even more surprising that much basic investigative work had not been done.
The further information required by the French court includes documentation behind the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s uncompleted investigation into the attack, a summons for former FBI investigator Tom Nicoletti, French Foreign Ministry documents concerning the organization of the Cambodian military at the time of the attack, and United Nations archival records.
A video tape made in Bangkok in 1998 featuring one of the grenade throwers, Chhay Vee, in which he purportedly confessed to having been recruited for the job, had not been transcribed into French.
Nearly 28 years after the attack, the French legal dossier remains far from complete. One reason for the delay was that the original case filed by Sam Rainsy in 2000 was withdrawn in 2006 as part of a political truce with Hun Sen.
Sam Rainsy told the court he had tried to establish a “culture of dialogue” with Hun Sen. That dialogue, of course, is long dead. “It’s a language that Hun Sen doesn’t understand as an ex-Khmer Rouge,” Sam Rainsy told the court.
A further source of delay was made clear by the testimony of Gildas Le Lidec, French ambassador to Cambodia in 1997, on the second day of the trial.
Le Lidec, now aged 78, spoke under oath by video link from Orléans in France. He said it is now extremely difficult for him to remember in detail the events of 1997.
The judge reminded Le Lidec that he had previously been questioned by a French investigating judge in 2014. Le Lidec said that he had been questioned over an unrelated matter relating to his spell as French ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa and that there might also have been a few questions about Cambodia.
In his video testimony at the trial, Le Lidec was in fact able to remember his reaction on the day of the grenade attack. He said there was a film festival organized by the French embassy which was due to take place on the evening of March 30. Frédéric Mitterrand, the nephew of former French President François Mitterrand, was going to attend.
In light of the news of the grenade attack, there was “a day of doubt” as to whether the event could go ahead. The ambassador’s initial reaction was to question whether the grenade attack had in fact taken place. Le Lidec was angry that “Anglo-Saxon colleagues” wanted to cancel the event.
All information in Phnom Penh at the time had to be treated with caution because there was so much false information, he said. The “daily salad” from Phnom Penh was often not passed on to the French government. “Normal” diplomats from European countries, Le Lidec said, were “less excitable” than those from the U.S.
The result was that “our services did not react in the way that one might expect,” on the day of the attack, Le Lidec said. “I had the success of my cultural festival in mind.” It was finally decided to go ahead with the film festival.
One of Sam Rainsy’s lawyers, Pierre-Olivier Sur, asked if Le Lidec regretted his coldness in focusing on the film festival. Sur said: “Your diplomat’s costume caused you to lose all humanity.”
Le Lidec replied that he “did not find the right equilibrium between my personal feelings and my diplomatic function.”
The decision to carry on with the film festival later pushed Le Lidec into positions of absurdity regarding the grenade attack. When questioned by French investigators in October 2014, Le Lidec stated that the attack may have been instigated by Sam Rainsy, who was “a great manipulator.”
Le Lidec in 2014 also continued to question whether Sam Rainsy was present at the time of the attack, despite the large numbers of eye witnesses who confirm this. Even Hun Sen has never claimed that Sam Rainsy was not present.
Le Lidec was not willing to stick with his earlier arguments at the trial. He stated that he now accepts that the attack took place, that it was not instigated by Sam Rainsy, and that Sam Rainsy was present. He stated that he had just retired when he was questioned in 2014. “I don’t know what happened to me then. I did pass via this interpretation,” he said.
The judge reminded Le Lidec that his 2014 questioning was part of a criminal inquiry, and not a “light conversation.” Public prosecutor Isabelle Poinso stated that the case had for years remained “a dead letter” because of Le Lidec’s positions, notably his skepticism as to Sam Rainsy’s presence at the time of the attack.
Sam Rainsy referred to the ambassador’s testimony on the final day in court. He said that Le Lidec’s wife had helped to protect his wife Saumura Tioulong and their daughter in Cambodia. Sam Rainsy added that he has friendly relations with the ambassador, and that he harbors no animosity toward him.
The impression given by Le Lidec’s testimony was of a man out of his depth when faced with a sudden hard decision. He made no mention of whether there was consideration of postponing rather than canceling the film festival, which no doubt would have meant a large waste of budget.
The result is a further delay in establishing the full facts behind the attack. The court would clearly be closer now to being able to return a verdict but for the delays that Le Lidec’s self-justifications have caused.
For the families of the victims of the attack, the wait therefore continues. The number of victims of Cambodian political assassinations continues to increase.
On January 7, 2025, Lim Kimya, a former member of parliament for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, co-founded by Sam Rainsy in 2012, was assassinated shortly after arriving in Bangkok from Cambodia.
The Thai authorities have to date not had any success in their requests to the Cambodian government to hand over two suspects identified by the Thai courts in connection with the killing.
Lim Kimya, like Sam Rainsy, had French as well as Cambodian citizenship. His French widow Lim Ani, who has filed a French legal complaint, was present in court on the final day of the grenade attack trial.