PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) Cambodia's highest court released an activist on bail Friday after she served more than a year in prison on charges widely condemned as trumped up to silence a government critic.
The Supreme Court sent Yorm Bopha's case back to the Appeals Court for further investigation and a possible retrial.
Yorm Bopha, 30, was imprisoned in September 2012 and sentenced by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to three years in jail last December on charges of plotting "intentional violence" against two men.
Human rights groups said there was inconsistent testimony and no evidence against her, and that the conviction was the result of government interference with the courts.
They allege she was convicted because of her activism against her community's forced eviction from the capital's Boeung Kak lake area. The government leased the land to a development company with ruling party ties in 2007, and thousands of people were pushed out of their homes.