AFP
PHNOM PENH - A FORMER child medic at the Khmer Rouge's notorious main prison told Cambodia's war crimes court Monday that he tried to keep torture victims alive with pills known as 'rabbit pellet medicine'.
Sek Dorn, now 48, was testifying at the trial of Duch, who is accused of overseeing the torture and execution of about 15,000 people in the late 1970s at Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21.
The witness, who said he was assigned to care for prisoners when he was still a child, told the UN-backed court that he mostly gave the wounded and sick inmates pills they called 'rabbit pellet medicine'.
The so-called medicine, nicknamed for its grainy resemblance to rabbit faeces, was a homemade mixture of various ingredients used to treat a wide range of illnesses during the Khmer Rouge regime.
The witness told the court that he sometimes cleaned prisoners' wounds, but the primary method of care was providing the pills, even though he did not know their properties.
Sek Dorn said that despite receiving the pills, hundreds of prisoners died from their wounds and sores after being tortured.
'Most of the prisoners had diarrhoea or fever or headaches, and the majority of them had wounds on their backs. Some of them had their fingernails or toenails missing,' Sek Dorn said, adding that some had their ears torn.
The 66-year-old Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, has previously 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.
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