Tuesday, July 31, 2007


PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Jul. 31, 2007 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- The former chief of a notorious Khmer Rouge prison was questioned Tuesday by a Cambodian genocide tribunal investigating crimes committed during the regime's rule in the late 1970s, an official said.

Kaing Khek Iev, who headed the former S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, became the first suspect to be questioned by the tribunal, set up jointly by Cambodia and the United Nations, said tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath.

Kaing Khek Iev, 62, has been in prison since 1999 when he was discovered by a Western photographer after two decades in hiding. It was unclear what charges he may face.

Some 1.7 million people were executed or died from hunger, disease and overwork as a result of the Khmer Rouge, overthrown by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979.

Suspected enemies of the ultra-communist regime were brutally tortured at the S-21 prison before being taken out and killed in fields near the city. Of 16,000 people imprisoned, only about a dozen are thought to have survived.

Kaing Khek Iev, a former schoolteacher also known as Duch, supervised the brutal interrogations at S-21, now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. His attention to detail and sense of duty meant S-21 kept meticulous records of victims, which are likely to serve as key evidence in any trial.

According to a transcript of a 1999 government interview, Kaing Khek Iev said he was not a 'cruel' man but 'an individual with gentle heart caring for justice ... since childhood.'

He claimed he was following orders to save his life.

'I was under other people's command, and I would have died if I disobeyed it. I did it without any pleasure, and any fault should be blamed on the (Khmer Rouge leadership), not me,' he said, according to the transcript obtained by The Associated Press.

Government security forces escorted Kaing Khek Iev from a military prison to the tribunal headquarters early Tuesday morning, said Reach Sambath.

He is among five ex-Khmer Rouge leaders being investigated by the tribunal's judges.

'They need to do an initial interview with him, but he has not been formally charged yet,' Reach Sambath said.

Cambodia's government has renewed Kaing Khek Iev's detention every year under a special law passed in 1991. The government has charged him with war crimes but never brought him to trial, and the U.N.-backed tribunal is a separate process.

Chum Mey, a prison survivor, said he was pleased Kaing Khek Iev was brought in for questioning.

'I want to confront him to ask who gave him the orders to kill the Cambodian people,' said Chum Mey, 77. 'I want to hear how he will answer before the court, or if he will just blame everything on the ghosts of Pol Pot and Ta Mok.'

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and Ta Mok, his former military chief, died in 2006.

Three other senior officials in the regime _ Nuon Chea, the movement's chief ideologue; Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister; and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state _ live freely in Cambodia but are in declining health.

Like many senior Khmer Rouge officials, Kaing Khek Iev had an academic background, excelling at math as a student and becoming first a schoolteacher, then deputy principal of a provincial college.

He was jailed for his leftist sympathies and opposition to corruption in the mid-1960s. By 1970, he had fled to the jungle to join the Khmer Rouge. In the jungle, he ran a prison where suspected enemies of the movement were executed.

He disappeared for two decades after the Khmer Rouge's overthrow, living under different names in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwestern Cambodia, where missionaries converted him to Christianity.

His chance discovery by a Western photojournalist led to his arrest in May 1999.

Newstex ID: AP-0001-18541502


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