ZCZC
BFF-21
CAMBODIA-KHMER-ROUGE-JUSTICE-HEALTH-DUCH
Convicted Khmer Rouge prison chief discharged from hospital
PHNOM PENH, Nov 13, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The former chief interrogator and
torturer for Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge has been discharged from hospital after a
health scare that lasted weeks, an official told AFP Tuesday.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, is serving a life sentence for
managing the Phnom Penh detention centre S-21 where some 15,000 people were
confined and sent to their deaths in nearby “Killing Fields” in the late
1970s.
The former mathematics teacher-turned-diehard revolutionary was the first
member of the Khmer Rouge to face judgement before a war crimes tribunal in
Cambodia and was sent to live out his remaining days in Kandal prison after
an appeal extended his original sentence to life in 2012.
Duch fell ill with respiratory problems in late October and was rushed to
hospital in the capital Phnom Penh where his condition was deemed serious at
the time, but the head of the prison said he pulled through.
“I did not hope he would survive,” Chat Sineang, director of the Kandal
prison, told AFP.
“But he has recovered from the illness and he arrived back at the prison on
Monday evening.”
He said, however, that Duch — who turns 76 in a few days — was still weak
and needed help from guards when he wanted to use the bathroom.
Duch was arrested in 1999 after being discovered working for a Christian
aid agency under a false name.
His trial was a landmark for victims seeking justice for crimes under the
Khmer Rouge regime, whose dreams of an communist agrarian paradise led to the
deaths of up to two million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979.
Though Duch asked for forgiveness, he also argued that he was not a senior
leader of the ultra-Maoist movement and should therefore be acquitted.
But S-21 was at the heart of the Khmer Rouge’s fearsome security apparatus
and many inmates were tortured into signing false confessions of wrongdoing.
The UN-backed trial in Phnom Penh has been tainted by its limited scope and
the age of its defendants since it started more than a decade ago, recording
only three convictions — including Duch’s.
Ieng Thirith, the Khmer Rouge social affairs minister and one of the
suspects on trial in the case after Duch’s, was released on mental health
grounds before dying in 2015.
Her husband and co-defendant Ieng Sary died two years earlier.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0956 hrs