The Phnom Penh Municipal Court charged Cambodia’s top Islamic cleric Sos Kamry’s son Suhaimi Kamarutin with two counts of rape and sexual assault of 18 female students at an Islamic school dormitory in Phnom Penh.
Deputy prosecutor Phlang Sophal confirmed Suhaimi’s charges under Article 240 of the Criminal Code for rape with aggravating circumstances and Article 247 and 248 of the same Act for indecent assault with aggravating circumstances relating to the status of the perpetrator and victim, respectively.
According to Article 240, Suhaimi can be punished with seven to 15 years‘ imprisonment, and face two to five years jail time under the other two pieces of law, if found guilty, Sophal said on Saturday.
The arrest follows a Facebook post by an account named “Som Mengly”, on October 10, which went viral. The account was deactivated four days later.
In the post, Suhaimi was alleged to have sexually abused 18 female students while he was chief of security, public order and sanitation at the dormitory.
Sok Sambo, director of National Police’s Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department, mentioned that Suhaimi was arrested and questioned on October 15, 2024.
“The suspect was summoned for questioning but he denied the allegations. The prosecutor ordered his detention,” he said. The suspect has been sent to the court following the procedure.
Sambo said his department’s investigation found that four victims, aged 13, 14, and 15 (two of them), alleged that they were raped and experienced indecent acts by the suspect.
Among the four victims, only two filed a complaint, while four witnesses testified to the police. “The police are investigating further to find other victims,” Sambo said.
Sos Kamry declined to comment. His secretary Mat Alti, who answered the phone, told CamboJA News that Kamry wants to “stay silent for a while” and “does not want to talk to the media”.
Eng Chandy, executive director of Gender and Development for Cambodia, lauded the legal action taken against the suspect while calling for a serious penalty.
“When the hearing is in court, I hope that he is found guilty of aggravated [assault], and that there is no tolerance or [consideration] to reduce the sentence,” she said.
“If there is no fair response to such an act, it will continue to happen, and efforts to bring justice to the girls will fail in Cambodia,” Chandy said.
She noticed that if the punishment was light instead of a maximum sentence, it would encourage people to commit more offenses or repeat the same crime.
(Additional reporting by Soeung Nimol)
