Khmer Rouge Trial to End in Cambodia for Regime’s Jailer Duch

At least 14,000 people died in the prison ran by Duch. (Photo: Reuters)

By Daniel Ten Kate

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The trial of the Khmer Rouge’s top prison warden ends this week after six months of testimony about the regime’s mass killings and brutality that brought Cambodians face to face with the man who tortured them three decades ago.

The court will probably wait until March next year to give its verdict against Kang Kek Ieu, also known as Duch, said Reach Sambath, a spokesman for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the United Nations-sponsored tribunal tasked with trying five senior Khmer Rouge leaders. Duch, 67, the first member of the administration to face trial, hears final arguments in the trial this week.

The former math teacher who converted to Christianity in 1996 cooperated with the trial and apologized to victims. He faces four charges involving pre-meditated murder, torture, rape and enslavement at Tuol Sleng prison in the capital, Phnom Penh, where only about a dozen of at least 12,000 inmates survived.

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