PHNOM PENH, Nov 25 (Reuters) - The Khmer Rouge's chief torturer and jailer expressed "excruciating remorse" on Wednesday for more than 14,000 people killed under his watch at a notorious prison during Cambodia's ultra-Maoist revolution of the 1970s.
In the final week of testimony for the first senior Khmer Rouge cadre to face the U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal, Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, said he was solely liable for the killings but that he served a "criminal organisation".
"I found I had ended up serving a criminal organisation which destroyed its own people in outrageous fashion. I could not withdraw from it," said the 67-year-old former maths teacher.
"I was like a screw in the machinery of a car that could not be removed," he added.
Duch is accused of "crimes against humanity, enslavement, torture, sexual abuses and other inhumane acts" as commander of S-21 prison during one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century when the Khmer Rouge ruled from 1975-79 under Pol Pot.
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