In this photo released by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Kaing Guek Eav, the former chief of the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison, is seen in the court room of the U.N.-backed tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2009. Prosecutors in the genocide trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief demanded he be sentenced to 40 years in jail for his role in the killing of thousands of Cambodian prisoners.
(AP Photo/Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia)By Tim Johnston in Bangkok
Published: November 27 2009
Kaing Guek Eav, who ran the Khmer Rouge’s most notorious prison, on Friday unexpectedly asked judges in Phnom Penh to acquit him of crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture.
Mr Kaing Guek Eav, who is better known by his nom de guerre Duch, ran S-21, a prison housed in a former high school in the Cambodian capital where some 15,000 men, women and children were tortured before being killed.
Duch has admitted that he ran the institution, but said he never personally tortured or executed anyone. A born-again Christian, he has expressed remorse and asked for forgiveness, telling the court he was merely following orders and would have been executed himself had he not obeyed.
“I would ask the chambers to release me. Thank you very much,” Duch said at the end of his closing statement.
Prosecutors have asked that the former high school mathematics teacher be sentenced to 40 years in jail.
For eight months, the court – a hybrid institution consisting of both Cambodian and international judges, prosecutors and defenders – has heard a litany of horror from the families of victims, historians and, most poignantly, some the few men and women who escaped death.
The court was shown original confessions extracted under torture, some with annotations in Duch’s hand that the prisoner should be tortured further. They heard how inmates were tortured and beaten – physical mutilation, waterboarding and draining prisoners of blood were favoured techniques – before being driven out to the “killing fields”, where adults were killed by being hit in the back of the head with a mattock and children had their brains dashed out by being swung by the legs against a tree.
Duch, 67, is the first prominent member of the Khmer Rouge to go on trial. Pol Pot, the French-educated architect of the slaughter, died of natural causes in 1998. Four of his alleged senior lieutenants, including Nuon Chea – “Brother Number Two” – and Ieng Sary, the regime’s foreign minister, are due to go on trial next year.
The court, which has the authority to impose a maximum sentence of life in prison, is expected to hand down a verdict in the Duch case early next year.
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