Born-again Khmer Rouge torturer who may become Year Zero’s scapegoat
Under close guard in a military prison in Phnom Penh, a solitary old man awaits trial for one of the 20th century’s worst episodes of mass murder.
A tribunal backed by the United Nations to examine the crimes of the Khmer Rouge is due to get under way later this year after a decade of foot-dragging, political obstruction and prevarication.
Yet with thousands of killers still living freely, including some of the most important figures from the old regime, there is so far only one accused of crimes against humanity: a former maths teacher-turned-torturer called Duch.
He survived the fall of the regime to become a born-again Christian, although it has never been established exactly how repentant he is.
The man born Kak Kek lev in 1941 or 1942 was never a top party leader, but he did head the internal security organisation, Santebal. He ran a notorious interrogation and torture centre called Tuol Sleng in a converted Phnom Penh school, which sent about 14,000 men, women and children to their deaths.
Read entire article at Times (of London)
A tribunal backed by the United Nations to examine the crimes of the Khmer Rouge is due to get under way later this year after a decade of foot-dragging, political obstruction and prevarication.
Yet with thousands of killers still living freely, including some of the most important figures from the old regime, there is so far only one accused of crimes against humanity: a former maths teacher-turned-torturer called Duch.
He survived the fall of the regime to become a born-again Christian, although it has never been established exactly how repentant he is.
The man born Kak Kek lev in 1941 or 1942 was never a top party leader, but he did head the internal security organisation, Santebal. He ran a notorious interrogation and torture centre called Tuol Sleng in a converted Phnom Penh school, which sent about 14,000 men, women and children to their deaths.