CAMBODIA: Forty-three Cambodians arrived in the capital Phnom Penh yesterday after being deported from the US under a law allowing repatriation of immigrants who have committed crimes and not become US citizens.

The group is the largest sent to Cambodia under a 2002 bilateral agreement that has seen 500 other Cambodians repatriated already.

The programme is controversial because it breaks up families and some “returnees” have never lived in Cambodia, having fled to Thailand as refugees in the 1970s from the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.