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While more senior Khmer Rouge leaders will be brought before
Cambodia’s genocide tribunal former prison chief Duch is
likely to be the star witness, key to unlocking the murderous
regime’s secrets, analysts say.
Duch, whose real name court documents say is Kaing Guek Eav, was
charged last Tuesday with crimes against humanity. He is the first
Khmer Rouge figure to be detained by the UN-backed court for crimes
committed during the regime’s 1975-79 rule.
His arrest is certain to be followed by more; four other top
regime leaders are under investigation.
Their names have not been made public, but they are widely
thought to include former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan,
as well as regime leader Pol Pot’s deputy Nuon Chea and
foreign minister Ieng Sary.
But these former cadres have issued blustery denials, and Duch,
who oversaw the regime’s notorious Tuol Sleng prison, is the
court’s best chance of linking his bosses to the mass deaths
that occurred under their rule.
“As Pol Pot’s chief executioner, Duch holds the key
to unlock the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge,” said
photographer Nic Dunlop, whose book “The Lost
Executioner” detailed how in 1999 he tracked down Duch, by
then a born-again Christian working anonymously with various relief
groups.
“He was the link between the mechanics of the murder at
that time and the leadership’s directive. This makes him ...
a key witness to the inner workings of Pol Pot’s
regime,” Dunlop said.
“Duch could, if he decides to speak as he did in 1999,
explain the decision-making for the killings and the chain of
command and responsibility,” he added.
In interviews given shortly before his arrest eight years ago,
Duch implicated himself, as well as Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan in
the regime’s atrocities.
Other equally damning transcripts of interviews with Duch exist
and have been handed over to the court, said Youk Chhang, whose
Documentation Centre of Cambodia has been compiling evidence of the
regime’s crimes for more than a decade.
“He is the middle person, the joint” between the
regime’s top and bottom, Youk Chhang told local media.
Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or
were executed, under the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-79 rule.
The communist regime also abolished religion, schools and
currency, exiling millions to vast collective farms in a bid to
create an agrarian utopia.
Duch is “ready to reveal the crimes committed by the Khmer
Rouge”, according to a provisional detention order issued by
tribunal judges Tuesday before he was taken into the court’s
custody.
Despite the preponderance of documents left behind by the Khmer
Rouge, its obsession with secrecy could prove an obstacle for
prosecutors trying to tie individuals to crimes.
“Orders were often verbal and open to interpretation
– everything was hidden,” said Hisham Mousar, a
tribunal observer with the Cambodian rights group Adhoc.
Khmer Rouge officials referred to “weeds” being
“pulled” and people being re-educated or re-located,
cloaking their deaths in bureaucratic language and insulating the
executioners from culpability.
This makes fulfilling the court’s requirement that it
prove the identities of “those most responsible” for
Cambodia’s genocide all the more difficult.
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