PHNOM PENH: The former head of a prison where thousands of Cambodians were tortured then killed for opposing the Khmer Rouge expressed remorse for his deeds as a genocide tribunal got under way here late Wednesday.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, is charged with crimes against humanity. He is the first of five defendants who belonged to a close-knit, ultra-communist regime that turned Cambodia into a vast slave labor camp and charnel house in which 1.7 million or more people died of starvation, disease and execution.
Duch oversaw the S-21 prison in the capital Phnom Penh, previously a school, now the Tuol Sleng genocide museum, through whose gates some 16,000 men, women and children passed. Only a handful survived.
In one mass execution, he gave his men a “kill them all” order, the indictment said. In another incident involving 29 prisoners he told his henchmen to “interrogate four persons, kill the rest,” it said.
After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Duch disappeared for two decades, living under two other names and converting to Christianity before he was located in northwestern Cambodia by a British journalist in 1999.
source : jang.com.pk
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