Duch faces his victims as tribunal begins

Jared Ferrie, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: March 30. 2009 11:03PM UAE / March 30. 2009 7:03PM GMT

Kaing Guek Eav, centre, better known as Duch, the former Khmer Rouge prison chief of S21 stands in court in Phnom Penh yesterday. Mak Remissa / AFP Photo

PHNOM PENH // Sighs and murmurs of shock drifted through the gallery at an international tribunal yesterday during the first day of testimony, as lawyers described torture at a Khmer Rouge prison.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his revolutionary name “Duch”, is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role as head of S21, where as many as 17,000 people were tortured before being executed. The trial comes 30 years after Vietnamese troops ousted the Khmer Rouge regime, which killed more than 1.7 million people.

An order of indictment, which was read out in court, described prisoners being beaten, electrocuted and having their fingernails pulled out, among other acts. One prisoner was forced to eat his own excrement.

Duch has admitted that he oversaw, advised and participated in torture sessions. He is the only one of the five former Khmer Rouge leaders facing charges to have admitted guilt, and his lawyer said Duch will apologise for his role in the Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

An apology will not be enough for Om Chanta, whose husband was executed by the Khmer Rouge along with many other family members. “I really want to kill him right now,” she said, fighting back tears. “He looks so calm. I don’t understand what kind of blood flows in his veins.”

Dressed in a white shirt and brown trousers, Duch listened impassively to lawyers laying out the case against him, often with his head bowed, sometimes reading documents. A wall of bulletproof glass separated him from about 500 victims and observers who packed the viewing gallery.

“Today Duch had to put his eyes to the floor because for the first time my clients, the victims, can look at him face to face,” said Pierre-Olivier Sur, a lawyer for some of the “civil parties” or victims who have asked for a role in the trial.
At one point Duch was asked to stand, and he answered questions about his background to confirm his identity.

“I have been notified of the charges against me,” he said before his lawyer asked that he be allowed to resume sitting.
According to the order, Duch told investigators that he tried to release prisoners on several occasions, but was prevented from doing so by his superiors.

Although he admitted ordering torture and executions, Duch maintained that he was following orders from the Khmer Rouge’s central committee.

In pursuit of a classless agrarian society, the Khmer Rouge executed intellectuals and others they considered enemies of the revolution. But as millions faced starvation in work camps, Khmer Rouge leaders began looking for spies within the party whom they could blame for undermining their vision. At S21, Duch ordered his torturers to extract confessions that allowed him to map out elaborate conspiracies, which implicated others who would then be arrested.

Duch and his team kept meticulous records, producing hundreds of thousands of pages documenting confessions and torture methods. Although researchers have pored through the documents over the past three decades, the indictment still held some brutal surprises.

“I’d never heard that 1,000 people had their blood drained before they’d been killed. It shows the utter dehumanisation that took place in S21,” said Alexander Hinton, the author of Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide.

“Today we got the historical record laid out in more detail than we’ve ever had before,” said Mr Hinton, who is the director of the Center for Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University in the United States.

Proponents of the tribunal hope that exposing Khmer Rouge atrocities in such detail will help Cambodians reconcile with their painful past. But the court has also been stung by allegations that local workers were forced to give part of their salaries to Cambodian superiors to acquire and keep their jobs. And critics are urging the court to expand the scope of prosecution, arguing that trying so few people cannot achieve justice for atrocities committed on such a massive scale.

Analysts said Duch’s testimony could provide ammunition for lawyers in the upcoming trial of senior Khmer Rouge leaders Noun Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith. Duch’s trial is expected to last up to four months.

jferrie@thenational.ae