Khmer Rouge trio accused of ‘worst horrors’ at UN trial

THE top surviving commanders of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime masterminded one of the “worst horrors” of the 20th century, creating a living nightmare by killing or enslaving millions of Cambodians, a UN-backed war crimes trial has heard.

Prosecutors said former president Khieu Samphan, ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary and second-in-command Nuon Chea had called the shots in the bloody “Killing Fields” revolution that wiped out a quarter of the population and destroyed the lives of millions.

The three were top henchmen of Pol Pot, the late architect of the “Year Zero” revolution under Democratic Kampuchea, as the regime was known. Between 1.7 and 2.2 million people died from 1975-79 of torture, execution, disease, overwork or starvation.

The defendants, who are charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, showed no emotion as Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang delivered powerful opening statements to a packed tribunal.

“Every Cambodian who was alive during this period was affected by the criminal system of oppression which these accused put in place. The death toll is staggering,” Chea Leang said.

“The forced evacuations of Cambodian cities, the enslavement of millions of people in forced labour camps, the smashing of hundreds of thousands of lives in notorious security centres and the killing fields, and the extermination of minorities, the countless deaths from disease, abuse and starvation — these crimes ordered and orchestrated by the accused were among the worst horrors inflicted on any nation in modern history.”

The prosecutors are expected to ask for the maximum sentence of life imprisonment.