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Hoang Dinh Nam / AFP - Getty Images
Students watch a live broadcast of the court hearing for the appeal of former Khmer Rouge jailer Kaing Guek Eav at the canteen inside the complex of the Cambodia's UN-backed Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh, Feb. 3.
A math teacher turned prison chief who oversaw a torture center where at least 12,000 people died under Cambodia’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime will spend the rest of his life behind bars, after a war crimes court rejected his appeal to overturn his conviction and instead increased his sentence.
Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, was deputy and then chairman of S-21, a school converted into a prison where thousands of Cambodians were brought for execution during the regime’s 1975-1979 rule. He is the only former cadre to accept responsibility and express remorse for his role in what has become known as “the killing fields.”
Duch, the first former Khmer Rouge cadre to stand trial before a United Nations-backed tribunal, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in July 2010 on charges that included crimes against humanity and numerous grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. After reductions for 11 years he had already served in custody and another five years for his illegal detention by the Cambodian military, he received a 19-year term, angering survivors and activists.
Prosecutors appealed, asking for a life term. Duch’s attorneys also appealed, seeking an acquittal for the 70-year-old.
On Friday morning, at the tribunal on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, a judge said the tribunal's Supreme Court Chamber had rejected his appeal while accepting part of that made by the prosecutor. A number of Buddhist monks could be seen in the gallery at the hearing, which was shown online via livestream.
The chamber threw out his original sentence, imposing life instead, and tacked on additional convictions for the crimes against humanity of extermination (encompassing murder), enslavement, imprisonment, torture and other inhumane acts.
"The chamber noted that the high number of deaths for which Kaing Guek Eav is responsible (minimum 12,272 lives), along with the extended period of time over which the crimes were committed (more than three years), undoubtedly place this case among the gravest before international criminal tribunals," the court said in a statement. "The chamber also held that the fact that the accused was not on the top of the command chain in the regime does not by itself justify a lighter sentence, and that there is no rule that dictates reserving the highest penalty for perpetrators at the top of the chain of command."
After a judge finished reading the decision, Duch nodded his head and put his hands together in a prayer-like gesture -- a sign of respect in Cambodian culture.
"It is not over yet," Youk Chhang, head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, said before the judgment in an email to msnbc.com. "There is a long road from here to one day that such atrocities could be prevented. Duch’s verdict will be a reminder of a starting point of this long journey to justice."
Under the Khmer Rouge, nearly one quarter of the country’s population – or at least 1.7 million people – died from execution, disease, starvation and overwork, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia.
The ultra-Maoist group strived to create an agrarian utopia (and called their effort a return to “Year Zero”), forcing city dwellers to rural areas to work on large farms, destroying money, shuttering schools and prohibiting religious worship in the predominantly Buddhist country. Intellectuals, or those with an education, were often deemed their enemies and targeted for execution.
Intensifying border skirmishes with neighboring Vietnam led the Vietnamese to invade Cambodia and thereby end Khmer Rouge rule.
Vietnamese troops entered S-21 in April 1979, finding a few surviving prisoners and endless documentation -- confessions, execution orders -- of what had happened there. The classrooms served as torture centers and where prisoners were held shackled for days and months on end often until a “confession” was extracted from them.
Now called Tuol Sleng, the site serves as a memorial to the victims, with photos taken of them -- by the Khmer Rouge as part of their prisoner intake process -- serving as a haunting reminder of the past.
David Longstreath / AP, file
Photographs of Cambodians killed at Tuol Sleng prison in the 1970s are seen through barred windows at the facility, which is now a museum.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1999. Four of the regime’s top surviving cadres are currently on trial before the tribunal, which has come under criticism for alleged political interference by the Cambodian government and lack of judicial independence. An international judge said he resigned last October after government ministers made statements about the court not pursuing more trials after those of the four regime survivors.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a hybrid of international and Cambodian judges, began in 2007 -- after 10 years of halting back-and-forth negotiations on its composition and operations.
Theary Seng, who survived the Khmer Rouge regime and is an advocates for victims, said though she agreed with Duch's life sentence since it matched the gravity of his crimes, she was disturbed by the chamber's decision to overturn the lower court's acknowledgment of his confession, cooperation and illegal pre-trial detention.
"The legal implication carries dangerous consequences for the Cambodian national court system in the embedding of fair trial rights and due process, especially on the violation of pre-trial detention rights which is an abhorrent and pervasive problem in the national court system that we want (to) change in our society," she wrote in an email to msnbc.com.
She also noted that the life term, while appeasing the emotional sentiments of victims in handing out the most extreme sentence, had aligned with the Cambodian government's efforts to make Duch, "a small fish" in the regime, the "sole scapegoat."
"I am extremely disturbed because today's final closure on one case involves a man who was not a senior KR leader; Duch was the director (of) one prison, among 200 KR prisons. Where I was detained as a child (at age) seven, DCCam (the Documentation Center of Cambodia) estimated 30,000 were believed to have been killed there, including my mom," she said. "But this and similar other prisons will never get a hearing."
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Leave a Comment:
He got off easy. He and his cohorts were inhuman, MONSTERS. He should be chained to the classroom floors, and let relatives of the MURDERED thousands do with him as they will...
The sad part is that the US government actively supported the Khmer Rough Regime during the Carter Administration. Former National Security Adviser Z. Brzezinski even admits this in his book.
The US Government will overlook atrocities by any dictator as long as it's politically desirable to do so. Hell, they've installed dictators after covertly removing democratically elected leaders.
expat7, I'm sure that one of the countries you're referring to is Iran. Too bad we were more concerned with the feelings of the British than we were about democracy.
I can only think it is a repeat of every area in the world that Hitler touched. This is the Middle East death camp. +
Marlen: The even more tragic part is there were Americans among the prisoners at Tuol Sleng. Not many, only a few, but none are reported to have survived.
And to Just Saying: Please do not take this wrong, but Cambodia is in Southeast Asia, not the Middle East. But your intentions are correct: Tuol Sleng was a death camp, and the Khmer Rouge was truly evil.
Good. For this guy life in prison is getting off easy, but I guess it'll have to do.
You don't know what you are talking about...
Well what do you do? Life in prison is too easy, and death is too kind... then again, I sure wouldn't want to visit a Cambodian penitentiary. Not even if I was just visiting. Maybe he'll find death there instead.
How about Hun Sen(Former Khmer Rouge) now known as the Prime Minister and some of his CPP(Former Khmer Rouge friends)? Remember 1997 folks? I don't have to research about it. I witnessed it.
leave this genocidal ahole in a dark cell to rott and reflect on his misled judgement and crimes!!
I am so disgusted by his act. I do not understand the long wait to put him to trial and to sentence. Cambodia's government needs to progress and be part of a positive economic world power. Because of the slow system and corrupt selfish people, Duch will have a few years or less to live out his sentence. Is it because the war was so long ago that Cambodia wants to forget and almost forgive? The sentence for overseering the death of tens of thousands of people was a slap on the wrist! Why allow outsiders to deal with his fate, it should be Cambodia's responsibility to make sure the inhuman beast will never see the light of day. All the people that participated in the tortures should be jailed in maximum security. If humans cannot justify his act then his maker will.
Just the fact that he would appeal a less than life sentence shows in itself that he has absolutely no remorse for his role in the genocidal executions. How he ever received a less than natural life sentence to begin with is mind boggling.
No food, no water, no nothing. That should be his life sentence. Let him live as long as he can! Then dispose of the mess in a Phnom Penh sewer. Those were his own people his crimes were perpetrated against. This is not a human being, it is a deadly fungus!
I've been to S-21 and the mass graves outside of Phenom Phen. The things I saw there would make you sick. This guy is getting off way easier than his victims did. It's a real shame they allowed Pol Pot to die of old age. They knew exactly where he was.
What were his choices? Was he one against hundreds, thousands above him? Did he do the acts or allow the acts so not to become one himself? It is unclear what he actually did himself? Did he kill or torture those people himself? And this all happened in 75 and 76- Terrible as it was ;one man can't be responsible for all those deaths, and the only one they have to prosecute and is remorseful--- 16 years! and he is now 70 sounds as if the Judges are harder than the prisoner -is there nothing good about him worth saving or for those trying him , nothing merciful in them?
You got to be kidding! How do you explain the Nuremburg trials after WWI? The war crime trials for the former Yugoslavia? You think there was any good in those people? This man oversaw the prison and tortures. Read your history - he was the most notorious and cold blooded of the bunch. If you could see the school with the rooms divided into 3 x 6 foot cells, the gallows in the courtyard and the tree with the spot worn into the bark where they took infants to bash thier heads against it, you might change your attitude.
Dan, you are so right. I second your comments.
SJ, are you one of those fools who believes that because this murderer found Jesus, he should be allowed to walk free?
made a bad decision
at least he is remorseful, and he is the only one. All orders to execute at S-21 went through Neon Chea (Brother #2) before being carried out. He is by far worse than Duch. sj, aren't they showing mercy by imposing a life vs. death sentence? Most of the nazis at Nuremburg were executed.
You're right, he is a small fish and a scapegoat, but all of us have choices. His choice was he could choose to work there and obey his commanders, or he could resist and suffer the consequences.
The peculiar thing about life in prison for these despots is that they happen in very special conditions:
1. When they're in the end of their lives, having lived full lives and they're already "prepared" for death;
2. When imprisoned, their cages most of the times, if not all of the times, are golden lairs with special treatment and privileges.
Just to name a couple...
So, when is justice served?
I hope so...
Lengthy terminal torture would have been a more appropriate sentence for this Mao follower......
I no longer see the UN as a valid entity of morality and justice. And if this man did even half the things they say it is so strange he just isn't executed. My guess is he was working for the powers that be knowing what was to come afterwards. Perhaps he is also "being brought to justice" to cover the other war criminals. I wonder what about the criminals we have here in the U.S.A. that also tortured and killed? I'm not a liberalist or Marxist in the least except where European Americans are concerned. If the UN and our government condones these sort of monsters, don't you think such tactics could be used on European citizens as well?
Also a lot of these deaths happened do to irresponsible Europeans or their elite sellouts giving or selling our technological secrets to people unwilling or unable to respect their destructive power such as guns, missiles fighter craft. These were European and their kinship inventions meant to protect civilization it's self not prop up some dictator we found living in a hut or strong man long house.
would never happen in u.s.: police are like child-molesting priests in u.s., just sent off to another parish - that is kind of funny...
still waiting on the zombie apokolypse
Life is to light of a sentence for this scumbag; hell, we executed the Nazi bastards at Nuremberg. Too bad the UN has no balls.
I REALLY like the idea that when you loose an appeal, you can get your sentence INCREASED. Sweeeeeeeet! Too bad that the USA does not do that.
The reason we do not increase sentences on appeal is because our traditions of Common Law do not allow it: This precedence dates back to early England and beyond. Of course this same English Common Law is also the reason we have the Bill of Rights and was the main argument for us fighting for Independence in the first place. I shudder to think where our freedom would be without it - we would have Bergen Belsens and Tuol Slengs here on our own soil.
"Back to year Zero?" Isn't this where all of the religious crazies want to take the world??While they kill each other saying "My god is better than your god". I could see any number of religious crazies in this country sitting in that same chair, facing sentencing for despicable crimes against one group or another, after they had been given the reins of power for 5 or 10 years.I could easily imagine Pat Robertson there...no problem....only he wouldn't be sorry.
are we talking about Dick Cheney?
The man accepted Jesus Christ as his Saviour, surrendered to preach, and served as a pastor for several years after the Khmer Rouge were removed from power. He readily confessed to everything, giving details, rather than denying his participation. The Bible makes it clear in Hebrews 10: 17 that God does not remember his sins anymore. When he was called in to do a job by the Khmer Rouge, he either performed as directed, or he himself was murdered. Yes, he saved his own life, but had he became a martyr, and now forgotten in history, others would have taken his place. What he did was wrong - terribly wrong - but he is terribly remorseful, and was trying to redeem himself with humanity. Sorry, folks, he IS going to be in Heaven, with NO sins attached! A problem with the court considering his appeal is that Buddhists do not like Christians! Before you answer and jump down my throat, tell me if you had been in his shoes 37 years ago, would have chosen the route to be a martyr?? Please don't respond unless you have the guts to address this point!
He was not trying to redeem himself with humanity, he was trying to redeem himself with God. If he were trying to redeem himself with humanity, he wouldn't have challenged his sentence.
Let me ask you about this fellow-Jesus Christ-before I answer your question. Is this the same guy who has allowed all of the carnage recorded in history to be inflicted on mankind? Did he have anything to do with the crusades, and all those killings, either by participating or standing on the sideline? Is he responsibe for kids being born with deformities or terminal illness? Perhaps those children "desreved" it somehow by Your Lord's reckoning?What about the deaths of 50 million people in WWII. Was this just a movie for him that he watched, and he allowed to happen, or was he proactive?? is he the one who is going to burn gays for eternity for the way He supposedley created them?? Is he responsible for the creation of women who are relegated to second string play by Catholic men, and murdered by Muslim men, if they are too "westernized' or they don't give birth to a male?? Stick this crap where the sun doesn't shine, pal, and get a grip on reality. Or I will send "The Devil" himself to stick his pitchfork in your ass. How's this reply work for you?
E K Kadiddlehopper: His heart and soul may belong to God but for now his *ss belongs to the prison system. I hope he lives a long and miserable life! Off topic are you related to CLEM?
left-handed: Let's really irritate the religious out there. I put forth to you the theory that religions are this: Our early ancestors attempts at explaining the mysteries of the universe for which they had no answers. Unfortunately the more sophisticated people became the more perverse they became in their thinking. If I have a question about a given religion I go to www.religioustolerance.com I will never ask a pratictioner of a given belief system what they believe as I will often times get their interpretation which can vary wildly from the actually tenets of whatever faith it is.
Fit him for a pair of concrete shoes and dump him in the Mekong.
Tim McCain: Not only did he sit idly by and allow it. What percentage of it do you suppose was done in his name?
This son of a bitch is an evil bastard. Hope someone kills him in prison. EVIL.
E K Kadiddlehopper. I strongly disagree with you. I toured S-21 and the Killintg Fields last summer. And even as a Vietnam Veteran is was shocked and sickened. Maybe you could stand by and watch as the Khme Rouge swung little babies by their legs and smashed their heads againt the "Killing Tree' or watched as they tied Women down and "Ripped" their "Nipples" off with pliers. And don't talk Religion to me. You only worship Religion. You have no idea of the plans of God the Father. When he created Man he also created the Law of Cause and Effect,(Karma), or as Jesus has said. That which you do you will also Reap. Duch's punishment has just begune. In theNext LIfe he will claim his Karma..
The US soldiers did similar "friendly acts" to the civilian folks in Vietnam. Luckily those soldiers didn't have it in them and lost the war. Now that IS poetic justice.