Jailer taken to killing field

Duch, after his arrest in 1999.

February 26, 2008
DETAINED Khmer Rouge jailer Duch, who faces trial over Cambodia's 1970s genocide, was taken today to the regime's most notorious killing field to re-enact his alleged crimes for a UN-backed court.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, last visited the Choeung Ek execution site outside the capital Phnom Penh nearly 30 years ago, while he oversaw the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng prison. The prison was the Khmer Rouge's main torture centre, where some 16,000 men, women and children were brutalised before being murdered during the regime's repeated purges of its ranks.
Most of those killed at the prison were buried at Choeung Ek, which is now a macabre tourist attraction. Duch, who has not denied his role at Tuol Sleng, is expected to walk the court officials through his actions.
The reconstruction of his actions before court officials and a number of witnesses, believed to include Tuol Sleng survivors, was a normal part of the genocide tribunal's investigation, court officials said.
The tribunal, which convened in July 2006, is investigating the atrocities committed during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule over Cambodia ahead of public trials expected to start this year.
Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed by the Khmer Rouge, which dismantled modern Cambodian society in its effort to forge a radical agrarian utopia.
Cities were emptied and their populations exiled to vast collective farms, while schools were closed, religion banned and the educated classes targeted for extermination.
- AFP