Jailed Thai Soldiers Receives Embassy Visit

(VOA Khmer) - Thai Embassy officials will be allowed to visit a former Thai soldier in a Cambodian military prison, after the man was sentenced to 20 years for planting landmines along the border, defense officials said.

Earlier this month, a military court found Suphab Wong Prakna, 39, guilty of planting mines in Anlong Veng, a former Khmer Rouge redoubt on the Thai border. He was arrested in February 2009 with mines and explosives on his person.

Cambodia and Thailand are engaged in a protracted military standoff, that has left at least eight dead, and the trial raised questions of whether both sides are mining the border.

Suwat Kaewsook, a senior adviser at the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh, is expected to visit the military prison on Friday afternoon.

Prakna’s lawywer, Sam Sok Kong, said he believed the sentencing was fair, given the evidence against his client and the confession he gave. The court could have given the accused from 30 years to life imprisonment, he said.

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Thai embassy to help Thai convicted of laying landmine in Cambodia

(The Nation/Asia News Network) - Thai embassy in Cambodia will offer aid to a Thai convicted of planting landmines along Thai-Cambodia border and was sentenced to 20 years in jail, Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said recently.

The diplomats are looking into what assistance the government is able to provide, Kasit said.

In a hearing last week, Suphap Vong Pakna confessed to planting at least five explosive devices along the Cambodia-Thailand border, claiming Thai soldiers paid him to do so.

Pakna's lawyer says his client received a fair trial. "I think he is getting a fair judgment according to the evidence and his confession, because the court reduced the jail term from 30 to life imprisonment to 20 years in prison based on our terror law, article 75."

The 39-year-old was arrested in February of last year after he allegedly entered Cambodian territory and laid landmines.

A Thai investigation reportedly found Russian-made landmines in the area which they say were recently planted and of a type that Thai soldiers have never used.

Thai authorities said the findings suggested that Cambodia may have been guilty of breaking the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which bans signatories from using anti-personnel mines.

Cambodia, however, dismissed the accusation, saying any landmines in the area were remnants of the three-decade war.

The group Landmine Monitor says mined border areas between Cambodia and Thailand have the highest concentration of landmines in Cambodia.

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