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Mak Remissa / Pool / EPA File
Former Khmer Rouge foreign affairs minister Ieng Sary in 2010. Sary, who has been on trial at the UN-backed war crimes court since 2011, died in a Phnom Penh hospital where he had been taken on March 4.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Ieng Sary, who co-founded Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge movement in 1970s, was its public face abroad and decades later became one of its few leaders to be put on trial for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, died Thursday morning. He was 87.
His death, however, came before any verdict was reached in his case, dashing hopes among survivors and court prosecutors that he would ever be punished for his alleged war crimes stemming from the darkest chapter in the country's history.
Ieng Sary was being tried by a joint Cambodian-international tribunal along with two other former Khmer Rouge leaders, both in their 80s, and there are fears that they, too, could also die before justice is served. Ieng Sary's wife, former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, had also been charged but was ruled unfit to stand trial last year because she suffered from a degenerative mental illness, probably Alzheimer's disease.
Lars Olsen, a spokesman for the tribunal, confirmed Ieng Sary's death. The cause was not immediately known, but he had suffered from high blood pressure and heart problems and had been admitted to a Phnom Penh hospital March 4 with weakness and severe fatigue.
"We are disappointed that we could not complete the proceeding against Ieng Sary," Olsen said, adding the case against his colleagues Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologist, and Khieu Samphan, an ex-head of state, will continue and will not be affected.
Ieng Sary founded the Khmer Rouge with leader Pol Pot, his brother-in-law. The communist regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, claimed it was building a pure socialist society by evicting people from cities to work in labor camps in the countryside. Its radical policies led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.
Ieng Sary was foreign minister in the regime, and as its top diplomat became a much more recognizable figure internationally than his secretive colleagues. In 1996, years after the overthrown Khmer Rouge retreated to the jungle, he became the first member of its inner circle to defect, bringing thousands of foot soldiers with him and hastening the movement's final disintegration.
The move secured him a limited amnesty, temporary credibility as a peacemaker and years of comfortable living in Cambodia, but that vanished as the U.N.-backed tribunal built its case against him.
The Khmer Rogue came to power through a civil war that toppled a U.S.-backed regime. Ieng Sary then helped persuade hundreds of Cambodian intellectuals to return home from overseas, often to their deaths.
The returnees were arrested and put in "re-education camps," and most were later executed, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group gathering evidence of the Khmer Rouge crimes for the tribunal.
As a member of the Khmer Rouge's central and standing committee, Ieng Sary "repeatedly and publicly encouraged, and also facilitated, arrests and executions within his Foreign Ministry and throughout Cambodia," Steve Heder said in his co-authored book "Seven Candidates for Prosecution: Accountability for the Crimes of the Khmer Rouge." Heder is a Cambodia scholar who later worked with the U.N.-backed tribunal.
Known by his revolutionary alias as "Comrade Van," Ieng Sary was a recipient of many internal Khmer Rouge documents detailing torture and mass execution of suspected internal enemies, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia.
"We are continuing to wipe out remaining (internal enemies) gradually, no matter if they are opposed to our revolution overtly or covertly," read a cable sent to Ieng Sary in 1978. It was reprinted in an issue of the center's magazine in 2000, apparently proving he had full knowledge of bloody purges.
"It's clear that he was one of the leaders that was a recipient of information all the way down to the village level," Youk Chhang said.
Ieng Sary was arrested in 2007, and the trial against him started in late 2011. He faced charges that included crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.
Only one other former Khmer Rouge official has been put on trial: former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, who was sentenced to life in prison.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has openly opposed additional indictments of former Khmer Rouge figures, some of whom have become his political allies.
Pol Pot himself died in 1998 in Cambodia's jungles while a prisoner of his own comrades.
Ieng Sary declined to participate in his trial, demanding that the tribunal consider the pardon he received from Cambodia's king when he defected in 1996. The tribunal, formally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, previously ruled that the pardon does not cover its indictment against him.
He denied any hand in the atrocities. At a press conference following his defection, he said Pol Pot "was the sole and supreme architect of the party's line, strategy and tactics."
"Nuon Chea implemented all Pol Pot's decisions to torture and execute those who expressed opposite opinions and those they hated, like intellectuals," Ieng Sary claimed.
Ieng Sary was born Kim Trang on Oct. 24, 1925, in southern Vietnam. In the early 1950s, he was among many Cambodian students who received government scholarships to study in France, where he also took part in a Marxist circle.
After returning to Cambodia in 1957, he taught history at an elite high school in the capital, Phnom Penh, while engaging in clandestine communist activities.
He, Ieng Thirith, Pol Pot and Pol Pot's wife eventually formed the core of the Khmer Rouge movement. Pol Pot's wife, Khieu Ponnary, also was Ieng Thirith's sister; she died in 2003.
Pol Pot was known as "Brother No. 1", Nuon Chea as "Brother No. 2" and Ieng Sary was "Brother No. 3."
In August 1979, eight months after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge by a Vietnam-led resistance, Ieng Sary was sentenced in absentia to death by the court of a Hanoi-installed government that was made up of former Khmer Rouge defectors like Hun Sen, the current prime minister. The show trial also condemned Pol Pot.
Since he was in charge of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement's finances, Ieng Sary was believed to have used his position to amass personal wealth.
On Aug. 8, 1996, a Khmer Rouge rebel radio broadcast announced a death sentence against him for embezzling millions of dollars that reportedly came from the group's logging and gem business along the border with Thailand. But the charge appeared to be politically inspired, recognition that he was becoming estranged from his comrades-in-arms.
He struck a peace deal with Hun Sen and days later led a mutiny of thousands of Khmer Rouge fighters to join the government, which was a prelude to the movement's total collapse in 1999.
As a reward, Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia almost unchallenged for the last two decades, secured a royal amnesty for Ieng Sary from then-King Norodom Sihanouk, who himself was a virtual prisoner and lost more than a dozen children and relatives during Khmer Rouge rule. The government also awarded Ieng Sary a diplomatic passport for travel.
Between his defection and arrest, Ieng Sary lived a comfortable life, dividing time between his opulent villa in Phnom Penh and his home in Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwestern Cambodia.
He and some of his former aides in the Khmer Rouge, intellectuals who were in a second generation of the group's leadership, made a short-lived attempt at forming a legal political movement.
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The fires of Hell will be burning a little hotter than normal with a new inmate arrival!
God must have been napping to have allowed this cretin so long a life.
Good morning, Ed. Not much to say when a leader of one of the great nightmares of the 20th century get off easy.
Good morning and right on chef-btw thanks for the smiley face for a dummy lesson the other day. I still could not make it work. Any way good to see you post and have a good one!
khmer Rouge,Fascism, irgun, stern gang, mao-ism,, it's just history repeating itself. I wonder where the next genocide will occur and to whom. If republicans ever get back in power, we liberals will be the ones buying guns.
If you had any sense at all you would buy guns anyway.
Yeah...I fear the far right as much as I do the far left, if either radical left or right got the power, doubt if they would let anyone be armed..
A lot of the radical left is in power and they do not want to let anybody be armed.
Good morning Chef. I personally do not think this guy got off easy at all. I sincerely feel his feet will be more than a little toasty warm for eternity! And well deservedly so.
If you think those guys are bad, just wait until the real bad guys show up. Prophesy is real and a glimsp of hell is on the way.
Hey Chief...you might want to check some sites for the similarity between the book of revelation, and the islamic end times and the mahdi, and the anti-christ. In islam 666 is not considered a evil number, etc..
Should have put a round in his head years ago and save all the trouble.
How ironic to see him wearing glasses and know he was an educated man. Execution was a blessing compared to the torture and loss the Cambodian citizens underwent during this time. Another history lesson the world should never forget.
And alot of the people who were executed were intellectuals too, if you even wore glasses you were on the death list
Wearing glasses was a sign of intellectualism and therefore they were executed. Actually that would have been nicer than what happened to all those people. If you were a military family (which I was but not Cambodian, American) all your family including children were buried with their heads and shoulders above ground, then your heads were chopped off. Hopefully the first swipe did it but usually not. So you not only got to watch your family die a horrid death but it was a condemnation for an entire family if you were an intellectual, military, city dweller, or any other trait that they felt would ruin their perfect world. And all these guys die from heart attacks and are just fine, all is not right with the world.
I have some friends that lived through that nightmare. It is sad that when I bring up the topic no one knows what I am talking about. We are doomed species.
Someday they will say the same thing about the Extremist in the Middle East while they fighting on some other thing. History, we are doomed to repeats.
With a little division of the true facts, the number of deaths given in this article are about 1/6 the actual number. Oh well, time to send Kerry over with his new drone medal, tell him where he is at, and have him shed a few tears at the funeral. Then we can all start promoting Cambodia as a wonderful place to vacation again, that is if you stay on the tourist path and avoid those goofy slave labor factories, death camps, and bodies of evicted poor people littering the side roads and fields. Beautiful place.... sure.
One can only hope that Hell really exists!!
wow; it's been a bad month for left-wingers!
But a good week for us!
Bad Month? lmao dow is 14k, trade deficit down 20%, more oil being drilled then ever before in the USA, unemployment is down to 7.7%, most of the banks paid back the bail out money.
I would say us liberals are having a great month. you guys are such pessimists. Or maybe your just upset at the fact that Bush trampled the republican party and we would not let Romney finish the job. Or maybe you just sad that a liberal black president turned out to be a better capitalist then Bush? If Romney had won, all you guys would be singing his praise and giving him credit for four hard years that Obama spent cleaning up your mess. Us lefty people are having a GREAT MONTH, THANK YOU. :)
Ummm... my post is about one more tyrant taking a dirt nap.
You might not see justice on this earth, but his punishment is very great indeed. Hell is very real.
It does exist.
hell? ok, they got this guy they call the devil. he is pure evil and gets joy out of tempting people into doing evil and selfish things. So you live a life of evil, just like the devil. Why would he punish you? for being like him? for doing his deeds? i would think he would wanna be your bff if your evil. it doesn't make sense.
Honestly George the devil doesn't spare people because his goal is to get us to fall and wind up seperated from God for eternity. he knows how much God loves us (so much that He sacrificed of Himself on the cross) because He wants us to be saved and be with Him. So the devil, hating that fact and hating us will do whatever he can to bring us down (this isnt to say that everything is his fault because we do have free will and the ability to choose God who will change us and help us through life). In the end though the Bible says that the devil will be thrown into the lake of fire along with everyone whose name isn't written in the book of life and will suffer right along with them forever. So rest assured, those who led/were apart of the Khmer Rouge and other dictatorships that died persisting in their ways or without Him will indeed stand before God's judgement seat and He is not corrupt. Thank God for the amazing love, mercy and grace He showed us so that we don't have to suffer that fate if we choose Him. Good for me too because I certainly make mistakes and need someone to help me back up.
Putting someone in their ninth decade in prison is not justice. You people knew where he was for thirty years and didn't do anything about it.
It's always great to see a left winger die. If we can just get rid of some of the right wingers next followed by more left wingers, maybe rational people will find common ground in the middle.
glad to see somebody blame both sides for once for problems, and not just all the liberals, or conservatives.
Left winger? What planet to you just come from? Pol Pot and his guys killed the lefties and teachers first. Anybody who had a smallpox vaccines (even little kids) where either killed or their arm cut off. This was an attack AGAINST the left, not by the left. you should come to the city once in while instead of living with ted nugent.
And how many were killed during the Stalin years, alot were communists themselves...Mao, Stalin, and Hitler are on the top list of mass murders, and I would not call the Nazi's left wingers...It was not so much as politics, as these guys were evil and crazy
Pattrick Hanna is right. When the trial started all the guy had to do to be dead was fall over.
This demonic entity has left the world. Too bad he was ever born.
Imagine walking through hundreds of acres of fields and not being able to walk in any direction without stepping on human bones. This guy and Pol Pot engineered the outright murder of over a million people in Cambodia just because they were educated, or wore glasses, or knew how to play a musical instrument, or had political aspirations...or for any other perceived reason. Monsters are not just under the bed.
This story adds a different slant to things. This leaders life went down a slippery slope, because of all the chinks in his armor Rest in peace Zipper Head!!! I love this crowd
Right wing, or left wing radical, does not make a difference, another evil person dead
If people continue to blindly follow one side or the other we can expect to see many more Pol Pots from the left and Bin Laudens from the right. It is time for humans to do what is best for hummanity, not the ideas of one corrupt party.
Agree with you on that one American Country Boy..sounds like you are a moderate like me, I look at both sides of the fence, yet we still get ripped sometimes by the far left, and far right commentators.
Been to Cambodia, people there not interested in retribution, more interested in the future. UN wants these trials. It is their country for now and they have only had a form of democracy for little more than a decade...let the Khmer people work it out... They did have eough sense to dis Obama
I bet nobody can guess which side george pauljohn is for. George, if president Obama where to say the only way to fix this nation is to do away with any one who ever owned a gun by committin genocide would you help. It seems as though every time some one does an evil dead it is the opposite party than the one followed by the accuser.
Well frank I'm not sure how I would be classified. I just try to think for my self. Both parties want us to blindly follow them! Niether party has said any thing worth hearing in a long time. But I am glad to see that I am not alone and others still think for them selves as well. THANK YOU.
Yeah...you have the "holier than thou" attitude of some people in that their party or afflilation is perfect and without wrong, and they would vote for Atilla the Hun, as long as they were of that party...etc..did not mean to actually classify you, but like I said...seems that you have alot in common with my opinions..and by the way, it nice to see somebody has some respectful replies, and do not resort to name calling, and nasty comments, just because somebody does not agree with them.
Another marxist now in hell. We had one go last week, another in Cuba who will be joining them shortly. Watch the killing fields if you're not familiar with Pol Pot. This is why the US involvment in Korea and Viet Nam was so important. Too bad we did not have the courage to finish the work in Viet Nam.
McArthur actually told Kennedy, and Eisenhower to not get involved in a Asian war..
The military had their hand tied in both conflicts, we were fighting at the front door, while they were coming in the back, but imagine what would have happened if we actually invaded North Vietnam, might have had a broader guerilla war, not to mention the americans did most of the fighting, did not hear a whole lot of good reviews of some of the South Vietnam soldiers..and looked what happened in Korea when we invaded the north, the chinese got involved, wonder if the same thing would have happened if we invaded North Vietnam.
Did agree with McArthur about bombing the Yalu bridges, etc.
We had the warfare advantage in the 50's and 60's to take out both China and Soviets if they wanted to try and stop us. If we would have we would not be facing China, Russia, N. Korea and Iran threats today. The 58,000 US soldiers who died in Viet Nam died in vain as the commies took over as we left.
Yes we had a numerical nuclear supeority, but even a little nuclear confict would have been bad, we had the tech. advantage also, but the Russians and the Chinese has the superior manpower, they could afford to take the casualties, look what happened during WW2, and Korea, and the casualties they took, life was cheap to them...not to mention they were right next door to Korea, and Europe, we had a long way to go, to get to them, even though we had troops in the area, we still would have had to ship more overseas. Think Reagan was right in his way to take down the Soviet Union, but remember Gorbachek (not sure about the spelling), was in power, and would not call him a die hard communist.
Yes Frank you are right that Soviets and China had huge advantage in men power, but with nuclear you don't have to use foot troups. Warfare is never good, only a last resort. But if you don't deal with something it usually comes back later to be far worse. ie. Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, and the US appeasing every one.
But the history of man is they never do finish off the enemy. I understand that America was tired of war. Then the 60's came and everthing went to hell. But for years the US was the only Country to stand up to evil. Now we are broke and have weak leaders. So we will see what happens with N. Korea, Iran, the middle east, and China.
Wow!!! Another "Hope and Change" dictator dies.
wow the unemployables are out with posts today...... dopey leftists when someone is referring to low information voters... they are talking about YOU....
"Low information voter" was coined by the Republican National Committee to describe their target for propaganda. That target is the conservative rank and file, not progressive intellectuals.
That's funny. I thought "low information voter" referred to someone who casts votes without bothering to get much information about the person they are voting for or the issues they are voting on. I keep forgetting that in the age of trademarking commonly used words that words can be used to mean something more specific than what they actually say.
I see the UN got on this real quick. Whats it been now, 35 years or so? Hope it takes less time to try Obama for his crimes.
No No No, the name of the criminal is GEORGE W. BUSH. The one who is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands in Iraq.
There is a new song coming out of an old one. "Four Dead in Bengazi"
Obama AND Bush... Let's be clear here. They're both war criminals.
And what did Obama do?
Treason..........................every...........day.
Back in those days they called them "Re-education camps". In the future they will be called "F.E.M.A.-Camps" This guy probably thought he did nothing wrong, murdering all those people. Over 58,000 American soldiers also died over there. When is the Civilized world going to realize most "Government Agenda's" are not in the peoples best interest?
and before that they were called concentration camps
America has no room to fault any other country's war crimes. Glass houses, anyone?
America has no room to fault any other country's war crimes. Glass houses, anyone?
America has no room to fault any other country's war crimes. Glass houses, anyone?
Joe, repeating your crazy beliefs will not make them truer.
I assume Joe is referring to FDR sticking 110,000 Americans into Concentration Camps. Those whacky democrats and their sense of humor.