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A Cambodian court charged two men with terrorism Wednesday in
connection with a recently failed plot to blow up a monument in the
heart of the country's capital, officials said.
Sok Roeun, a prosecutor at Phnom Penh Municipal Court, said he
charged Kem Toeun, 53, and Son Than, 42, with terrorism, which
carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Police arrested the two men Monday, a day after explosives
disposal experts defused bombs planted at the city's
Cambodia-Vietnam friendship monument, said police Maj. Gen. Chhay
Sinarith, who is chief of the Interior Ministry's information
department.
"Their main purpose was to destroy the monument because it is a
symbol of good relations between the Cambodian and Vietnamese
governments," Chhay Sinarith said, adding police were looking for
more plotters.
The three homemade bombs found Sunday — made of a mixture
of TNT and fertilizer packed in three buckets — were planted
at a monument dedicated to Vietnamese soldiers who invaded Cambodia
to topple the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
The monument is located in a park about 500 meters (yards) from
the southern wall of the Royal Palace, where King Norodom Sihamoni
and his parents live.
The monument was erected by a pro-Vietnamese Cambodian
government nearly 20 years ago.
Both arrested men are members of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom
Liberation Front, said Chhay Sinarith. He said the group is based
outside Cambodia and advocates taking back territory in southern
Vietnam that used to belong to Cambodia.
Many Cambodians resent neighboring Vietnam, which is a
traditional enemy that they feel has designs on their country's
land. But government-to-government relations are good —
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was originally part of a puppet
regime installed by Hanoi after the Vietnamese invasion.
Hun Sen's political opponents view the monument as a symbol of
a humiliating decade-long occupation by Vietnamese troops following
their invasion.
Protesters partially destroyed it during an anti-government
demonstration in 1998.
The monument was later restored, and visiting Vietnamese leaders
often go there to pay respects to their fallen soldiers.
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