Source: newsabahtimes
PHNOM PENH: A Khmer Rouge jailer who oversaw the deaths of 15,000 people at a notorious torture prison will learn his fate Friday when Cambodia’s UN-backed court issues its final judgment in the landmark case.
Kaing Guek Eav-better known as Duch-was sentenced to 30 years in 2010 over his role in the late 1970s as head of the feared S-21 prison where starving inmates suffered horrific abuse including electric shocks and having their finger nails pulled out.
Hundreds of Cambodians are expected to flock to the court Friday to hear whether the one-time maths teacher’s appeal for an acquittal was successful, or if judges will side with the prosecution and hand down a harsher punishment.
If the original verdict is upheld, Duch, 69, could be freed in under 18 years because of time already served.
This would be to the dismay of many victims of the brutal regime, which wiped out nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population through starvation, overwork and execution in a bid to create an agrarian utopia.
“He must die in jail,” said prominent Khmer Rouge survivor Chum Mey, 81, one of just a handful of people to make it out of S-21 alive.
“If he is not jailed for life, the court has no value, no justice at all because he killed so many people.”
Duch was the first Khmer Rouge cadre to face the international tribunal, set up to bring justice after the deaths of up to two million people during the regime’s 1975-79 rule.
Led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the communist movement emptied the capital Phnom Penh when they took power and S-21, a former school in the heart of the city, became the centre of the regime’s security apparatus.
Duch prided himself on keeping meticulous records, leaving behind a huge archive of photos, confessions and other evidence documenting inmates’ final terrible months.
After being tortured, thousands of prisoners were taken to a nearby orchard for execution.
The jailer was found working as a Christian aid worker in the Cambodian jungle in 1999 and has been detained ever since. He was formally arrested by the tribunal in July 2007.
During his nine-month trial Duch repeatedly apologized for his role at S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng prison, but he surprised the court in his closing statement by asking to be acquitted.
And during his appeal last March he told the court he only survived the brutal regime because he “respectfully and strictly followed the orders” and said he should be released because he was not a senior regime leader.
Prosecutors said the shock decision to ask for a full acquittal showed he “lacks real, sincere remorse for what happened” and demanded a life term, to be commuted to 45 years for time spent in unlawful detention before the court was established.
Trial observers say it is extremely unlikely Duch will go free.
“I don’t think anyone wants that to happen,” said Anne Heindel, a legal advisor to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which researches Khmer Rouge atrocities.
“History probably will not view him as contrite, because it does seem a bit self-serving to say ‘yes, I’m responsible for everything but you cannot find me guilty’.”
The conclusion of the case will be broadcast live on television in Cambodia, a nation still traumatized by the Khmer Rouge atrocities that touched virtually every family.
“It will be an important day in the sense that now we have completed the whole journey in the first case,” said court spokesman Lars Olsen. “Many people never thought that this day would come.”
Celebrated painter and S-21 survivor Vann Nath, who depicted the horrors of life inside the prison, died in September without ever knowing Duch’s final sentence, giving a new sense of urgency to the work of the court, which is regularly criticized for moving too slowly.
A second trial, involving the regime’s three most senior surviving leaders, is ongoing and is seen as the tribunal’s most important case.
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