Cambodia opens first ‘Killing Fields’ trial

CAMBODIA: The torturer-in-chief of Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime went before a UN-backed genocide tribunal on Tuesday for the long-awaited first trial into the “Killing Fields” atrocities 30 years ago.

Former maths teacher Kaing Guek Eav better known as Duch sat in the dock for an initial hearing into charges that he ran the main prison centre for the hardline-communist regime that killed up to two million people.

“This first hearing represents the realisation of significant efforts in establishing a fair and independent tribunal to try those in senior leadership positions,” chief judge Nil Nonn told the court.

A gaunt-looking Duch, 66, wore a blue shirt and listened through earphones to lawyers’ arguments as the court launched proceedings behind a huge bullet-proof screen, designed to prevent revenge attacks by his victims.

For Cambodians, the controversial tribunal, established in 2006 after nearly a decade of negotiations between Cambodia and the United Nations, is seen as the last chance to bring the Khmer Rouge’s leaders to justice.

“It is a very important day for me,” Chum Mey, one of only about a dozen people to have survived the notorious Tuol Sleng detention centre, told AFP. “I will be a witness and I want to see Duch and ask why he imprisoned me.”

Duch was indicted last year for allegedly personally overseeing the torture and extermination of more than 15,000 men, women and children when he headed the prison, built in a former high school.

Now a born-again Christian, he is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and premeditated murder and faces a sentence of life in prison from the tribunal. It does not have the power to impose the death penalty.

Several other survivors and people who lost loved ones at Tuol Sleng gathered outside the specially-built courtroom on the outskirts of Phnom Penh for the hearing.

Duch was transported in an armoured Land Cruiser with blacked-out windows from the nearby villa-style detention centre where he is being held with four other Khmer Rouge leaders, who face trial later this year.

Phnom Penh, Tuesday, AFP