Cambodia's senate passed a bill today to set up a tribunal to prosecute former top members of the communist Khmer Rouge government accused of genocide.
Senate president Mr Chea Sim said the bill was passed with the support of 51 of the 61 Senate members present.
The tribunal will involve Cambodian and foreign prosecutors and judges jointly indicting defendants and reaching verdicts together.
The foreign judges will be in a minority but will hold veto power over decisions. The system is a compromise between Cambodian officials who wanted to run the tribunal on their own and the United Nations, which pressed for foreign control.
The tribunal will prosecute Khmer Rouge leaders accused of responsibility for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people during their infamous killing fields regime of 1975-1979.
No Khmer Rouge leader has ever appeared in court to answer for the deaths. When the group finally collapsed at the end of the 1990s most of its surviving leaders were allowed to live in quiet retirement.
Reuters
