Toul Sleng survivor Chum Mey, 78, reads a profile of former S-21 prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, during a visit Monday to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Civil parties visited the museum after announcing a boycott of trial proceedings. (Photo by: TRACEY SHELTON)By Robbie Corey Boulet
The Phnom Penh Post
Psychologist says a desire for praise drove S-21's chief
THE man who ran Tuol Sleng is a largely unfeeling perfectionist who has often displayed "an absence of guilt" for the deaths of some 16,000 prisoners at the torture facility, two expert witnesses told the Khmer Rouge tribunal Monday.
Nevertheless, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, has recently adopted a "more personal view" of the Khmer Rouge years, speaking of them as less of an observer and more as a participant who regrets his actions, said Francoise Sironi-Guilbaud, a psychologist and lecturer who has written about torturers and their motives.
She and her colleague, Kar Sunbaunat, director of the Health Ministry's Natural Programme of Mental Health, told the court there was a chance Duch could be successfully rehabilitated and reintegrated into society.
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