Sous Thy said he constantly feared for his life after seeing other Tuol Sleng staff arrested and killedAFP
PHNOM PENH — A former staff member at a notorious Khmer Rouge prison testified on Tuesday to the starvation and torture endured by inmates, in the UN-backed war crimes trial of Cambodia's ex-prison chief Duch.
Sous Thy, who was responsible for registering inmates' movements in and out of Tuol Sleng prison, spoke in the trial of Duch for overseeing the torture and execution of about 15,000 people in the late 1970s.
"I did not pay great attention to their conditions, although I know that they suffered a great deal because most of them were very thin and the majority of them were so skinny and malnourished," Sous Thy, 58, told the court.
Little air circulated in cells and some prisoners died of starvation while others were tortured to the point of death, he said.
Weak prisoners were blindfolded before they were loaded onto trucks to be executed at the Choeung Ek "killing field", a former orchard on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh, he added.
"Regarding my work, I did not like it even a bit. But...I had to do it since I was ordered to do it," he said, adding that he constantly feared for his life after seeing that other Tuol Sleng staff were arrested and killed.
The witness told the court that each prisoner was detained up to two months before being killed. He said overcrowding was never a problem because of the constant killings at the prison, which had previously been a high school.
Sous Thy went on to tell the court that all who worked at Tuol Sleng disliked the ruthless Khmer Rouge regime but they were terrified of Duch, who made all decisions at the prison.
"Everything had to be done through Duch and with his authorisation," Sous Thy said, adding that all detainees had been executed under the prison chief's orders by the time Vietnamese troops ousted the Khmer Rouge in April, 1979.
The 66-year-old Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, has accepted responsibility for his role governing the jail and begged forgiveness for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But he has consistently rejected claims by prosecutors that he held a central leadership role in the Khmer Rouge, and says he never personally killed anyone.
Led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities in a bid to forge a communist utopia. Up to two million people died of starvation, overwork and torture or were executed during the 1975-1979 regime.
The tribunal was formed in 2006 after nearly a decade of wrangling between the UN and the Cambodian government. The court aims to complete Duch's trial by October, said a spokesman on Wednesday.
Four more former Khmer Rouge leaders currently in detention are expected to face trial next year at the court, and judges are expected to rule soon on whether investigators should pursue six more regime cadres for prosecution.
However, the troubled tribunal faces accusations of Cambodian government interference and claims that local staff were forced to pay kickbacks for their jobs.
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