Long-awaited trials for Cambodia's surviving Khmer Rouge leaders on charges of genocide moved a step closer on Monday with the swearing-in of judges and prosecutors — including a Canadian.

In an elaborate ceremony at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Buddhist priests took oaths from 27 officials of the tribunals, 17 Cambodian and ten from foreign countries.   

A Cambodian woman looks at the human skulls on display at a genocide museum in the capital Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
A Cambodian woman looks at the human skulls on display at a genocide museum in the capital Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
(Heng Sinith/Associated Press)
Among the foreign prosecutors sworn in on Monday is Robert Petit, a 45-year-old lawyer from Ottawa who works for Justice Canada's War Crimes division. Petit has sat on a number of international tribunals, including the UN-sponsored war crimes courts for Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

The Cambodian government and the United Nations agreed to run the trials jointly in 2003.

Nearly two million Cambodians were executed, starved or were worked to death when the Khmer Rouge ran Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

Survivors of the so-called "killing fields" of the Khmer Rouge era have been pressing for decades for leaders of the hard-line Maoist movement to be tried.

Delays in convening trials have been blamed on the dire state of the Cambodian justice system, which is still trying to recover after the Khmer Rouge wiped out nearly all of the country's middle and upper classes.

The Khmer Rouge were toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979 but waged a vicious civil war for nearly 10 more years.

The death of the movement's supreme leader, Pol Pot, in a jungle hideout in 1998 brought the conflict to an end — but also amplified fears that the aging leaders of the Khmer Rouge would die before they could be brought to justice.

A spokesman for the genocide tribunals said the swearing-in of judges should put those fears to rest.

Cambodians who survived the Khmer Rouge era welcomed news that judges were now ready to conduct the trials.

"I want to hear from the Khmer Rouge leaders why they killed and treated their own people so badly," said San Thann, a 58-year-old fishery official who lost two siblings.