July 28, 2009
Straits Times
PHNOM PENH - AN EX-STAFF member at a notorious Khmer Rouge-era prison testified on Tuesday to the starvation and torture endured by inmates, in the UN-backed 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 (real name Kaing Guek Eav) 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 recalled.
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 explained.
The 66-year-old Duch has accepted responsibility for his role governing Tuol Sleng, a converted high school, 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 from starvation, overwork, torture or execution during the 1975-1979 regime. -- AFP
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