Khmer Rouge Jailer Has First Day in Court

Pol Pot ally held for 8 years asks genocide tribunal to set bail
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 20, 2007 12:50 PM CST
Khmer Rouge Jailer Has First Day in Court
Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, center, former Khmer Rouge prison chief at Tuol Sleng prison, sits inside the court room during a hearing in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007. Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal opened its doors Tuesday for the first public court appearance of a Khmer Rouge...   (Associated Press)

The Cambodian “Killing Fields” tribunal heard an application for bail today from Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the math teacher who became the chief jailer of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime. Of at least 14,000 who went into Duch’s prison, only 10 survived, Reuters reports.

Duch has been held without trial for over 8 years as the genocide court squabbled over money. When his lawyer said Duch’s imprisonment violated his human rights, Cambodian spectators laughed, the New York Times reports. When journalists found him in 1999, he confessed to ordering multiple atrocities at S-21 prison. (More Cambodia stories.)

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