Interview: Craig Etcheson on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, the ECCC and 'Extraordinary Justice'

Between 2006 and 2012, Craig Etcheson worked as an investigator for the prosecution at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the UN-backed tribunal set up to try the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge. He has been studying the regime for more than thirty years, was a founder of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, and testified at the tribunal as an expert witness.

In this conversation we discuss his book Extraordinary Justice: Law, Politics, and the Khmer Rouge Tribunals and get into some of the complexities involved in this 'experiment', as he puts it: the shortcomings of the tribunal, interference from the Cambodian government, and the status of the cases still being heard.

A conversation for anyone wondering what justice for the Cambodian genocide actually looked like, who was put on trial and who never was, and why it took three decades to happen.