Khmer Rouge pair face genocide trial
Print Edition
Cambodia’s United Nations-backed court yesterday heard a former prisoner say he helped dig up more than 12,000 skulls in mass graves outside Phnom Penh, as the genocide trial of two Khmer Rouge leaders continued.
Nuon Chea, 88, known as “Brother Number Two,” and former head of state Khieu Samphan, 83, face charges over the killing of ethnic Vietnamese and Muslim minorities, forced marriage and rape during the 1975-79 regime.
In August the pair were given life sentences for crimes against humanity after a 2-year trial focused on the forced evacuation of Cambodians from Phnom Penh into rural labor camps and murders at an execution site.
The pair — the first top Khmer Rouge figures to be jailed — have been accused of playing a critical role in the “Killing Fields” era, a genocide which left up to 2 million people dead in the late 1970s.
Former prisoner Keo Chandara, 63, said he helped exhume more than 12,100 skulls from eight mass graves at Kraing Ta Chan prison in Takeo province, shortly after the regime fell in 1979.
“We did not excavate all the pits. I was ordered to dig the up pits ... I did the excavation at those eight pits,” he said.
The prosecution witness also gave graphic testimony of Khmer Rouge cadres torturing prisoners including a woman with metal pincers and then sulphuric acid.
“She was screaming and about 10 prisoners were ordered to watch,” he said.
When the court resumed the trial last month, the prosecution’s first witness told judges that Khmer Rouge soldiers slit the throats of hundreds of inmates at the prison and ate their gall bladders.
The complex case against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan was split into a series of smaller trials in 2011 to try to obtain a faster verdict against them, given their advanced ages.
They deny all charges against them and are appealing their life convictions.
The leader of the Khmer Rouge, “Brother Number One” Pol Pot, died in 1998 without ever facing justice.
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