On 9 October Sihanouk was condemned to death "in absentia" by a military court; his mother, Queen Kossamak – the symbolic representative of the monarchy under Sihanouk's regime – was placed under house arrest, and his wife Monique was sentenced to life imprisonment. The new regime simultaneously declared the Khmer Republic, and a new constitution was eventually to be adopted in 1972. Sihanouk, in the meantime, had formed GRUNK, a Beijing-based government-in-exile incorporating the communists and dedicated to the Republic's overthrow; he declared Lon Nol to be a "complete idiot" and characterised Sirik Matak as "nasty, perfidious, a lousy bastard".