Khmer Rouge torture chief weeps at "Killing Fields"
By Ek Madra1 hour, 16 minutes ago
The chief torturer under the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" regime wept and
prayed on Tuesday as he led the judges who will try him for crimes against
humanity around the mass graves for some of its victims.
Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, accompanied 80 judges, lawyers and other
officials of a U.N.-backed tribunal to the 129 graves, uncovered after a
Vietnamese invasion sent the Khmer Rouge back to the jungles in 1979.
"I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed
children to death," a policeman told reporters after the four-hour tour.
"He cried and apologized to the victims" in the former rice fields outside
Phnom Penh, he said.
Stacks of excavated skulls mark the area.
Some of the victims were from the regime's S-21 prison at the former Tuol Sleng
high school in Phnom Penh run by Duch, now 66.
About 14,000 people -- including a few foreigners accused of being CIA spies --
went into the jail to be tortured into confessing to working against a regime
deemed responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people.
Only a handful emerged alive.
"Duch expressed his sadness and shed tears two to three times," tribunal
spokesman Reach Sambath said. "He held his palms together to pay respect to the
victims in front of the shrine of skulls."
Duch, the first senior Khmer Rouge official to be detained, was to lead court
officials on a tour of Tuol Sleng on Wednesday.
"This is just one more piece in building a case file. It can be very useful in
court to have a visual representation of the site in question," Australian
court official Helen Jarvis said.
Tuol Sleng is now a shrine to those killed by the Khmer Rouge, who also
eradicated potential opponents of their back to "Year Zero" revolution to
produce an agrarian utopia through overwork, starvation and disease.
Detained in 1999 and now a Christian, Duch is expected to be a key witness in
the trials of "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's
right hand man, Khieu Samphan, president under the regime, Ieng Sary, its
foreign minister, and his wife.
"He could not have committed those crimes alone," Duch lawyer Kar Savuth said.
"He took orders from the top leaders."
Many Cambodians want to hear what Duch will have to say in trials expected to
start in July. The defendants face a maximum of life in prison.
"I still do not understand why Duch jailed me, killed my wife and our baby,"
said Chum Manh, 78, one of the few survivors of Tuol Sleng.
Nuon Chea is accused of playing a central role in atrocities by the Khmer Rouge
during their 1975-1979 rule, which they began by driving everyone out of the
cities with whatever they could carry.
He was arrested last year along with Ieng Sary and his wife, lifelong friends
of Pol Pot.
Pol Pot died in 1998 in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng.
(Editing by Michael Battye and Sonya Hepinstall)
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