Crowds get first look at Khmer Rouge 'torturer'
A gaunt former schoolteacher who once ran a notorious torture centre for Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge made his first public courtroom appearance today, evoking curiosity and anger as he stood before judges of a UN-assisted genocide tribunal.
Kaing Guek Eav – alias Duch – was escorted by guards into a packed chamber for a bail hearing.
Charged with committing crimes against humanity, Duch is one of five people held in connection with the communist regime’s brutal rule of Cambodia in the 1970s. Trials are expected to begin next year.
Duch, now 66, was the commandant of the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, also known as S-21. Thousands of prisoners were tortured there before being executed outside the capital at the site known as “the killing fields”.
No Khmer Rouge leaders have been tried nearly three decades after their regime collapsed, and many feared the group’s former leaders might die before facing justice. The movement’s notorious chief, Pol Pot, died in 1998.
Mam Thorn, 53, who had come to the hearing, said: “I am interested to see Duch. He was a prison chief who had inflicted suffering and killed thousands. ... We have wanted to know whether those who have committed wrongdoing will ever be prosecuted.”
Hundreds of people eagerly awaited Duch’s morning arrival, most forced by the small size of his hearing room to watch a live video feed in the tribunal’s bigger, main courtroom seating 500 people.
Two satellite trucks from Cambodian television stations were parked outside to broadcast the proceedings nationwide.
When he came into view, the crowd – many of whom were family members of victims of the 1975/79 regime – fell silent.
A presiding judge read aloud from Duch’s case file: “Under his authority, countless abuses were committed, including mass murder, arbitrary detention and torture.”
As they watched the proceedings, which continue tomorrow, onlookers explained their feelings.
Sin Khor, 58, who lost her husband and two brothers – one of them executed - under the Khmer Rouge, said: “More than three years under their rule were very painful. This makes me feel more confident about seeing justice done.”
Oum Pum, 76, who lost 12 relatives, said his anger made him want to “punch Duch in the face.”
“During the Khmer Rouge, they accused me of being CIA and put me in prison for one month before they released me.”
Greying and frail, Duch went into the witness box dressed in a white polo shirt and stood up when asked to tell the court his name. He then pressed his palms together in a sign of respect for the five-judge panel beside him.
When asked the reason for his appeal, Duch replied: “Because I had been detained for more than eight years without trial.”
His lawyers, countryman Kar Savuth and Francois Roux of France, sought his release on the basis that the time that Duch has already spent in a military prison on war crimes charges before being transferred to the tribunal’s custody in July violated his human rights.
To let him free pending trial was “not mocking the victims” of the Khmer Rouge but compensation for the time he has already spent jailed and a way to respect human rights, Mr Roux said to the panel of five judges – three Cambodian and two UN-appointed foreigners.
Duch used to be a schoolteacher with leftist sympathies and then deputy principal of a provincial college before joining the Khmer Rouge in 1970.
He supervised the brutal interrogations at the S-21 prison, where in 1975/79 up to 16,000 men, women and children were tortured before being taken away to be executed. Only 14 people are thought to have survived.
After the Khmer Rouge were toppled, Duch disappeared for almost two decades, living under different names in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in north-western Cambodia, where missionaries converted him to Christianity. His chance discovery by a Western photojournalist led to his arrest in May 1999.
Duch, like other former Khmer Rouge figures, has said he was simply following orders from the top to save his own life.
“I was under other people’s command, and I would have died if I disobeyed it. I did it (duty) without any pleasure, and any fault should be blamed on the (Khmer Rouge leadership), not me,” he told a government interrogator after his arrest.
Duch’s hearing began one day after former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, 76, was arrested and charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Last week, authorities arrested Ieng Sary, the Khmer Rouge’s ex-foreign minister, and his wife Ieng Thirith, its social affairs minister. Both were charged with crimes against humanity. Ieng Sary was also charged with war crimes.
Former Khmer Rouge ideologist Nuon Chea was detained in September on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
