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| Nuon Chea at his home on the Cambodian-Thai border in 2005. (Picture: AP) |
June 27, 2011
Sian Powell
The Australian
THE long-anticipated trial of the four most senior living Khmer Rouge leaders begins today, more than 30 years after Cambodia was racked by their ultra-communist rule of mass torture and murder.
Brother No 2, Nuon Chea; head of state Khieu Samphan; foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife; and social affairs minister Ieng Thirith, have all been charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Along with Brother No 1, Pol Pot, these four made Khmer Rouge policy, handed down orders and ruled over the deaths of as many as 1.7 million people who were executed or died from torture, starvation, exhaustion, illness or injuries.
A lawyer from Adelaide, Bill Smith, is the Khmer Rouge tribunal’s international deputy co-prosecutor. He has spent years wading through the evidence of anguish and despair to help put together the case against the four leaders, who were integral to the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.
“We’re confident there’s sufficient evidence to bring the accused to trial,” he said. “There’s a significant body of evidence.”
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