01005711 Case File No. 002/19-09-2007/ECCC/TC E313 83. In 1955, NORODOM Sihanouk renounced the throne in order to become the Chief of the Cambodian state. He won an election and launched the Sangkum party which established a neutral foreign policy that included as a policy a refusal to join the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.209 At that time, SON Ngoc Minh went to Hanoi and SIEU Heng controlled the Khmer communist movement particularly in the countryside, while TOU Samuth was Deputy Party Secretary responsible for Phnom Penh. Later, when SIEU Heng’s defection to NORODOM Sihanouk and LON Nol was revealed, TOU Samuth replaced SIEU Heng as the head of the party. 210 NUON Chea worked in secret on behalf of the KPRP and, in late 1955, was appointed party secretary for Phnom Penh,211 where he and POL Pot acted as TOU Samuth’s assistants.212 Between 1955 and 1960, however, the party remained disorganised and nearly dissolved.213 84. In 1959, TOU Samuth, POL Pot and NUON Chea began the process of creating a new Cambodian party free of the Vietnamese influence characterised by the Indochina Communist Party.214 According to KHIEU Samphan, the three men formed the Phnom Penh City Committee pending the election of new leadership.215 Expert Philip SHORT notes that KHIEU Samphan was assigned the task of rallying intellectual support and reaching out to potential communist sympathisers in 209 Book by E. BECKER: When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution, E3/20, 1986, pp. 80-83, ERN (En) 00237785-88. 210 NUON Chea Interview by KHEM Ngun, E3/3, Undated, pp. 10-11, ERN (En) 00184661-62. 211 NUON Chea Interview by KHEM Ngun, E3/3, Undated, p. 7, ERN (En) 00184658; See Section 7: Roles and Functions – Nuon Chea, para. 308. 212 NUON Chea Interview by KHEM Ngun, E3/3, Undated, pp. 7-8, ERN (En) 00184658-59; Article by NUON C.: Past Struggle of Our Kampuchean Peasants From 1954 to 1970, E3/131, pp. 8-9, ERN (En) 00716416-17. 213 NUON Chea Interview by KHEM Ngun, E3/3, Undated, p. 7, ERN (En) 00184658; NUON Chea: Past Struggle of Our Kampuchean Peasants From 1954 to 1970, E3/131, p. 8, ERN (En) 00716416. 214 T. 19 July 2012 (David CHANDLER), pp. 27-28; Book by KHIEU S.: Considerations on the History of Cambodia From the Early Stage to the Period of Democratic Kampuchea, E3/16, pp. 7-11, ERN (En) 00498226-30; Two other founding members, MEI Mann and CHAN Saman, abandoned their work early on: Book by KHIEU S.: Considerations on the History of Cambodia From the Early Stage to the Period of Democratic Kampuchea, E3/16, p. 7, ERN (En) 00498226; Book by E. BECKER, When the War Was Over, E3/20, 1986, 1986, p. 92, ERN (En) 00237797 (“since the Khmer communists held their meeting to elect leaders for the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party, the Cambodians had ceased to be a carbon copy of the old Vietnamese ICP”). 215 Book by KHIEU S.: Considerations on the History of Cambodia From the Early Stage to the Period of Democratic Kampuchea, E3/16, p. 7, ERN (En) 00498226, 00498229. Case 002/01, Judgement, 7 August 2014 - Public 44