German national, Judge Siegfried Blunk has resigned from his post at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the U.N.-backed internationalized criminal tribunal charged with investigating and trying perpetrators of crimes committed during the rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia the 1970s. His resignation comes one week after Human Rights Watch criticized ECCC judges Blunk and You for “egregiously violat[ing] their legal and judicial duties” by failing to move the court’s cases forward and succumbing to government influence. [RNW, Huffington Post, Telegraph] The UN has rejected allegations that it interfered with the ECCC’s work and noted Judge Blunk’s complaint of government opposition to the court’s progress in cases 003 and 004 against former senior military leaders accused of responsibility for thousands of deaths. [UN News Centre]