RCAF General Tortured by Family, Police Say

An RCAF one-star general was allegedly confined to a small room in his Tuol Kok district house for nearly three months by his wife and three sons, who systematically beat and tortured him in order to extort $80,000 in cash, police and court officials said yesterday. Ngin Chantreatevy, 50, and the couple’s three sons, Panh Shanea, 24, Panh Dararith, 23, and Panh An An, 19, were arrested on Saturday after serious crime police at the Interior Ministry raided the family’s rented home in Depot II commune and discovered Brigadier General Noun Pak, 52, locked in a room with wounds and burn marks coverings his body and face. “They tortured the victim Noun Pak very cruelly, tying the victim with ties, chains or karmas, then beating him with wooden sticks as thick as a wrist and metal wrenches, cutting him with big knives and pouring boiling water on his body,” said Lor Sokha, deputy serious crimes bureau police chief at the Interior Ministry’s penal department.

Phnom Penh Municipal Court charged Ms. Chantreatevy yesterday with torture and cruelty, while the three sons were charged with being accomplices to torture and cruelty, according to court clerk Kim Chheng Bun. According to a Dec 9 police report, Brig. Gen. Pak’s mother, Doeng Soth, told police that in mid-September her son had come to visit her in Ratanakkiri province covered in bruises and wounds and told her that his wife was beating him, locking him up and feeding him just one small dish of food ever day. But soon afterward, Ms. Chantreatevy followed her husband to Ratanakkiri and convinced him to return home, promising that she would stop being violent toward him, the police report said. Starting in late November, Ms. Soth received a series of phone calls from her son asking for $80,000 in cash in order to stop his conflicts with his wife. He told his mother that if he didn’t get the money, “My wife will hurt me until I die.” According to the report, Brig. Gen. Pak’s three sons told police after their arrest that their mother was displeased with their father because he had too many debts. After he ran away to Ratanakkiri in September, Ms. Chantreatevy confined their father to a room in their house and began to torture him, they said. The three sons insisted that they did not participate in the torture, but just guarded their father so he could not run away. Brig. Gen. Pak, who is currently an adviser to RACF, told police he had been married to Ms. Chantreatevy since 2986 and they had four children together, but after he fell into debt and was forced to pawn his land title, she locked him up and began torturing him three times a day. RCAF Commander-in-Chief Pol Saroeun declined all question to Brig. Gen. Pak, who could not be reached.