Cambodia’s ex-leader Hun Sen pledges to ‘eliminate’ would-be assassins

PHNOM PENH – Cambodia’s former leader Hun Sen on Feb 13 pledged to “eliminate” anyone who tries to assassinate him, after he said “extremists” tried to kill him and his family with a drone.

He ruled the nation with an iron fist for nearly four decades before handing power to his son, current Prime Minister Hun Manet, in 2023.

“I declare that I will eliminate anyone that wants to kill me and my family,” the 72-year-old posted on his Facebook page.

He attached a sound clip purportedly of a discussion between two people plotting to pour gasoline from an agricultural drone onto his house and set it alight.

Mr Hun Sen, who is president of the Senate and still seen as influential, said while he knew who the would-be killers were, he would not disclose their identities.

“We need to eliminate these extremists and violent people first,” he wrote, adding that the attack had been foiled.

In January, he called for a new law to label anyone who attempts to topple his son’s government as “terrorists” – a term he has regularly applied to opposition politicians.

Mr Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge cadre, has previously said he was the target of an assassination attempt.

In 1998, a convoy carrying the then leader in the city of Siem Reap was shot at with rocket-propelled grenades which missed their target, but left one person dead.

In January, Cambodian former opposition politician Lim Kimya was

shot dead in Bangkok

, a killing that government critics and opposition figures have alleged Mr Hun Sen was behind. AFP