Khmer Rouge torture chief goes on trial
A notorious torture centre boss went before Cambodia’s genocide tribunal today for its first trial over the deaths of around 1.7 million people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime more than three decades ago.
Kaing Guek Eav – better known as Duch, who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh - is charged with crimes against humanity and is the first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the United Nations-assisted tribunal.
Today’s hearing was procedural and testimony is expected to begin in late March.
Duch, driven to the hearing in a bulletproof car from a nearby detention centre, intently followed the proceedings in a court packed with some 500 people.
“It is not only me wanting justice today. All Cambodian people have been waiting for 30 years now,” said Vann Nath, one of less than 20 survivors of S-21, who attended the hearing.
“I look at Duch today and he seems like an old, very gentle man. It was much different 30 years ago.”
Vann Nath, who survived by painting and sculpting portraits of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, described Duch as a “very cruel man”.
Duch, 66, is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape at S-21 prison – formerly a school – where up to 16,000 men, women and children were held and tortured before being put to death.
“This first hearing represents the realisation of significant efforts to establish a fair and independent tribunal to try those in leadership positions and those most responsible for violations of Cambodian and international law,” presiding judge Nil Nonn told the chamber.
Duch has made no formal confession. However, unlike the other four defendants, he “admitted or acknowledged” that many of the crimes occurred at his prison, according to the indictment from court judges.
Duch, who converted to Christianity, has also asked for forgiveness from his victims.
Variously described by those who knew him as “very gentle and kind” and a “monster”, “Duch necessarily decided how long a prisoner would live, since he ordered their execution based on a personal determination of whether a prisoner had fully confessed” to being an enemy of the regime, the tribunal said in an indictment in August.
In one mass execution, he gave his men a “kill them all” order to dispose of a group of prisoners. On another list of 29 prisoners, he told his henchmen to “interrogate four persons, kill the rest”.
After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Duch disappeared for 20 years, living under two other names and as a converted Christian before he was located in north-western Cambodia by a British photojournalist Nic Dunlop in 1999.
Taken to the scene of his alleged crimes last year, he wept and told some of his former victims: “I ask for your forgiveness. I know that you cannot forgive me, but I ask you to leave me the hope that you might.”
When the communist Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 after five years of bitter civil war, many of their countrymen thought peace was at hand. But in their effort to remake society, they instituted a reign of terror that lasted nearly four years, until ended by an invasion by neighbouring Vietnam.
Many victims feared that all the Khmer Rouge leaders would die before facing justice and getting even one of them on trial is seen as a breakthrough. But there are concerns that the process is being politically manipulated and that thousands of killers will escape unpunished.
Duch’s hearing before the tribunal is expected to last two or three days.
Others facing trial are Khieu Samphan, the group’s former head of state; Ieng Sary, its foreign minister; his wife Ieng Thirith, who was minister for social affairs; and Nuon Chea, the movement’s chief ideologue.
All four have denied committing crimes.
