By Jill Serjeant LOS ANGELES, April 2 (Reuters) - The head of a California-based Cambodia resistance movement went on trial on Wednesday accused of orchestrating a coup attempt in 2000 against Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's government. Prosecutors said Yasith Chhun, 52, an accountant from Long Beach, held meetings with former Khmer Rouge members in Thailand, organized fundraisers aboard the Queen Mary in Southern California and planned the "Operation Volcano" plot in November 2000 that ended in three deaths and an unknown number of injuries. Chhun's lawyer, Richard Callahan, told a Los Angeles jury the only goal of the self-styled president of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters was "to bring democracy to his homeland." Callahan portrayed Chhun and his followers as naive but "desperately concerned about the people of Cambodia and their future." "You need to see what he saw and feel what he felt," Callahan told the federal court jury. Chhun has pleaded not guilty to four charges of conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, conspiracy to destroy property in a foreign country, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction outside the United States, and engaging in a military expedition against a country with which the United States is at peace. He faces life imprisonment without parole if convicted. Chhun was arrested at his Long Beach home in June 2005 after returning in the wake of the failed coup. U.S. prosecutors say he orchestrated the 2000 assault on Cambodian government buildings from a safe base in Thailand. According to Cambodian media reports at the time, a heavily armed group attacked a police station and several government buildings in Phnom Penh in the predawn hours of Nov. 24, leaving at least four dead and more than a dozen wounded. The Cambodian Freedom Fighters claimed responsibility for the shootout and dozens of suspected members were arrested in Cambodia. Three are already serving life sentences in Cambodian prisons and will give taped testimony at the trial, prosecutors said. Chhun's trial has been delayed repeatedly because of changes in his defense team. Hun Sen, an ex-Khmer Rouge fighter who defected to Vietnam in the late 1970s, has been in charge of Cambodia for more than 20 years. (Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Peter Cooney)
An ox rests at a rice field in Baan Ban village in Ayuthaya province, about 95 km (59 miles) north of Bangkok April 1, 2008.The first formal one-week talks in the ...
