Grey and frail, ex Khmer Rouge prison chief bids for bail

A GAUNT former schoolteacher who once ran a notorious torture centre for Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge made his first public courtroom appearance yesterday, evoking curiosity and anger as he stood before judges of a UN-assisted genocide tribunal.

Kaing Guek Eav — alias Duch — was escorted by guards into a packed chamber for a bail hearing.

Charged with committing crimes against humanity, Duch is one of five people held in connection with the communist regime’s brutal rule of Cambodia in the 1970s. Trials are expected to begin next year.

Duch, now 66, was the commandant of the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. Between 1975 and 1979, up to 16,000 men, women and children were tortured there before being executed outside the capital at the site known as “the killing fields”. A mere 14 people are thought to have survived the prison.

No Khmer Rouge leaders have been tried nearly three decades after their regime collapsed. The movement’s chief, Pol Pot, died in 1998.

Mam Thorn, who had come to the hearing, said: “I am interested to see Duch. He was a prison chief who had inflicted suffering and killed thousands... We have wanted to know whether those who have committed wrongdoing will ever be prosecuted.”

Hundreds of people awaited Duch’s arrival, most forced by the small size of his hearing room to watch a live video feed in the tribunal’s bigger, main courtroom, seating 500 people.

When he came into view, the crowd — many of whom were family members of victims of the regime — fell silent.

A presiding judge read from Duch’s case file: “Under his authority, countless abuses were committed, including mass murder, arbitrary detention and torture.”

Greying and frail, Duch went into the witness box dressed in a white polo shirt and stood when asked to tell the court his name. He then pressed his palms together in a sign of respect for the five-judge panel beside him.

When asked the reason for his appeal, Duch replied: “Because I had been detained for more than eight years without trial.”

His lawyers sought his release on the basis that the time Duch has already spent in a military prison on war crimes charges before being transferred to the tribunal’s custody in July violated his human rights.

The hearing continues today.