Top Khmer Rouge leader appeals against conviction

PHNOM PENH • The last surviving senior Khmer Rouge leader will next week begin an appeal against his life imprisonment for his role in the genocide committed by the regime in Cambodia more than four decades ago.

The Khmer Rouge, led by "Brother No. 1" Pol Pot, left some two million Cambodians dead from overwork, starvation and mass executions from 1975 to 1979.

The regime's former head of state Khieu Samphan, 90, will next Monday challenge his 2018 conviction for genocide against ethnic minority Vietnamese. He was convicted with "Brother No. 2" Nuon Chea and jailed for life for genocide and a litany of other crimes, including forced marriage and rape.

The pair were previously handed life sentences by the United Nations-backed court in 2014 for crimes against humanity over the violent evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975, when Khmer Rouge troops drove the population of the capital into the countryside.

Nuon Chea died in 2019, leaving Khieu Samphan the sole surviving Khmer Rouge leader to challenge the landmark ruling.

Khieu Samphan's defence team has asked the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia to overturn the judgment. "We will ask the court to acquit Khieu Samphan of the genocide," his lawyer Kong Sam Onn said yesterday.

Tribunal spokesman Neth Pheaktra said the hearing will take place from Monday to Thursday and, due to Covid-19 curbs, Khieu Samphan and his defence team will sit in a separate room from the judges. Khieu Samphan is expected to testify.

Pol Pot, who wanted to transform Cambodia into an agrarian utopia, died in 1998 without facing trial. Former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary also died before he could be tried.

The hybrid court, which uses a mix of Cambodian and international law, was created with UN backing in 2006 to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders. It has convicted only three people so far and cost more than US$300 million (S$407 million).

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE