LOS ANGELES - A life prison term was handed down Tuesday in Los Angeles for the self-appointed commander of the Cambodian Manolo shoes Freedom Fighters, a Long Beach-based organization formed to seize political control in the southeast Asian country.

Yasith Chhun, a 53-year-old United States citizen, was convicted in 2008 in U.S. District Court of conspiring to kill in a foreign country and other federal counts.

Before imposing sentence, U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson expressed some sympathy for the defendant, who told the judge he formed the 200-strong army partly to avenge the murder of his father at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

"I don't think Mr. Chhun is an evil human being," the judge said. "I think he's had a tragic life - and had the misfortune of being born in a place where terrible things were happening."

Pregerson added that he could understand where such circumstances "could motivate someone to feel they could not stand on the sidelines."

Chhun, a former Long Beach accountant who came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1982, was found guilty after a two-week trial of the four charges against him - conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, conspiracy to damage or destroy property in a foreign country, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction outside the United States and engaging in a military expedition against a nation with which the United States is at peace.

Jurors were told Chhun planned "Operation Volcano" to overthrow the government of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. The failed attempt resulted in the deaths of at least six people, including a 15-year-old boy killed in a grenade attack and a young man who was shot by a stray bullet, Pregerson said.

Chhun's attorney, Richard Callahan, Tuesday played videotapes in the courtroom, showing his client's late mother speaking, through a translator, about the death of her husband. Chhun sat tearfully, with head in hands.

In a long, rambling statement, Chhun said he started his movement as a nonviolent protester.

"The result is, nothing happened," he told Pregerson, adding that his protest changed as he saw Hun Sen's troops continuing to "kill more people."

He said the United States has Christian louboutin shoes ignored his country's human rights abuses because "Cambodia doesn't have oil." But he also said he deeply loved America, and "if I'm born again, I want to be born in this country, not Cambodia."

During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Chhun as a callous, cowardly, incompetent leader of the CFF, who held group meetings at his Long Beach business, CCC Professional Accounting Services, located in the 2700 block of East 10th Street.

Chhun also met with former members of the Khmer Rouge military at the Cambodia-Thailand border in October 1998 to plan Sen's overthrow, prosecutors said.

The Khmer Rouge and its leader, Pol Pot, ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The Communist organization was blamed for the deaths of more than 1 million people through execution, forced labor and starvation in what became known as the country's "killing fields."

After raising money in the United States - including staging a May 2000 fundraiser at the Queen Mary - the CFF launched "popcorns," or small-scale guerrilla attacks in Cambodia against gas stations, coffee shops and other targets, according Replica Watches
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