Verdict sets the stage for closure on Khmer Rouge

EXPECTANT: Left, villagers from Kampong Chhnang province visit the UN-backed war crimes tribunal on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The verdict in the trial of Kang Guek Eav, aka Duch, is due tomorrow.
Bou Meng, 68, below, one of the few survivors of the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol Sleng prison, at a genocide museum in Phnom Penh.
GRIM REMINDERS: A Cambodian girl looks at photos of victims of the Khmer Rouge at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh.

Tomorrow, the infamous Kang Guek Eav will learn his fate when he hears the court's verdict

25/07/2010
By Luke Hunt
Bangkok Post

"Every Cambodian alive right now is directly affected by the crimes of the past. In this regards it has a very direct and significant importance for Cambodian society, here in country and among the diaspora around the world" - Theary Seng

When Kang Guek Eav fronts the United Nations-sanctioned court tomorrow much will be at stake. For the former death camp commander, more widely known as Duch, his fate will finally be told.

As chief torturer and executioner during the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge rule, he faces a life sentence for the deaths of about 16,000 people who were processed at S21, headquarters of the secret police constructed within an abandoned high school in suburban Tuol Sleng.

Prosecutors are demanding 40 years although time off for the 11 years already spent behind bars could see this whittled back substantially.

Any reduction will anger the handful of S21 survivors.
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