PHNOM PENH - PROSECUTORS Tuesday gave harrowing details of the torture and execution of thousands of Cambodians as they laid their case against the Khmer Rouge regime's prison chief for the first time.

Inmates at the notorious jail run by Duch had their nails pulled out and their electrodes attached to their genitals, while some were subjected to live autopsies or had the blood drained from them until they died, they said.

Forgive me: prison chief PHNOM PENH - KHMER Rouge prison chief Duch admitted responsibility for his crimes at his UN-backed trial Tuesday and asked the families of the regime's victims for forgiveness. 'May I be permitted to apologise to the survivors of the regime and also the loved ones of those who died brutally during the regime. I ask not that you forgive me now, but hope you will later,' Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, told the court. ... more Duch played central role DUCH, 66, has denied personally torturing or executing prisoners but has taken responsibility for presiding over the prison in Phnom Penh. He is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and premeditated murder. Duch, who faces life in jail, said he acted under orders from superiors in the Khmer Rouge, which rose to power as a spinoff from the conflict in Vietnam and emptied Cambodia's cities to take society back to a rural 'Year Zero'. ... more 'For 30 years, one-and-a-half million victims of the Khmer Rouge have been demanding justice for their suffering. For 30 years, the survivors of Democratic Kampuchea have been waiting for accountability. For 30 years, a generation of Cambodians have been struggling to get answers for their fate. Justice will be done. History demands it.' -Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang

Only a handful of people are known to have survived their time at Tuol Sleng prison, which is now a genocide museum lined with photographs of some of the more than 15,000 men, women and children who died there in the 1970s.

Prosecutors at Cambodia's long-delayed UN-backed tribunal said Duch - a former maths teacher also known as Kaing Guek Eav - played a central role as chief of the security apparatus for the 1975-1979 regime.

'For 30 years, a whole generation of Cambodians have been struggling to get answers about their families' fates,' Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang told the court, as Duch jotted notes in the dock.

'Today in this courtroom before the Cambodian people and the world, at long last this process begins and justice will be done.'

During a brief recess, Tuol Sleng survivor Bou Meng told reporters video footage shown by prosecutors, which included a corpse chained to a bed, reminded him of how he lost his wife at the prison.

'I cannot forgive Duch because of my wife's life. I want to beat him to death, but I respect the law and now is the time to use it,' said Bou Meng, who was spared because his skills as an artist were deemed useful to the regime.

International co-prosecutor Robert Petit said that people detained at Tuol Sleng, also known as S21, had been tortured 'under the accused's direct orders and sometimes by his own hand.'

'The policy was that no one could leave S21 alive,' Mr Petit told the court.

'Victims were beaten with rattan sticks and whips, electrocuted, had toenails and finger nails pulled out, were suffocated with plastic bags forcibly tied over their heads and were stripped naked and had their genitals electrocuted,' Mr Petit said.

'The accused has stated that beatings by a stick was used the most because other forms of torture took too much time.' -- AFP