Khmer Rouge’s Final Surviving Chief To Serve Genocide Sentence In Cambodia

The 91-year-old was head of state for the murderous communist regime. (File)

Cambodia:

The final surviving Khmer Rouge chief has been transferred to a Cambodian state jail to serve two life sentences after shedding his enchantment in opposition to a genocide conviction, prosecutors stated Wednesday.

In its ultimate verdict final 12 months, the dominion’s UN-backed court docket upheld the 2018 genocide conviction and life sentence imposed on Khieu Samphan.

The 91-year-old was head of state for the murderous communist regime that worn out 1 / 4 of the Cambodian inhabitants in lower than 4 years within the Seventies.

Khieu Samphan and “Brother Quantity Two” Nuon Chea, who died in 2019, had been additionally given life sentences by the court docket in 2014 for crimes in opposition to humanity.

Khieu Samphan was arrested in 2007 and had been detained in a particular facility on the court docket.

“Khieu Samphan was transferred on… January 30, 2023, to Kandal Provincial Jail to proceed to serve his two life sentences,” prosecutors stated in a press release Wednesday.

Judicial authorities have “taken steps to make sure that Khieu Samphan’s circumstances of detention are acceptable for somebody of his superior age, restricted mobility, and state of well being,” they added.

The jail is a couple of 20-minute drive from Phnom Penh.

When he appeared in court docket in September Khieu Samphan appeared frail and sat hunched in a wheelchair within the dock, listening intently to the prolonged ruling by means of headphones.

His genocide conviction pertains to the persecution of ethnic-minority Vietnamese, seen by the Khmer Rouge as treacherous enemies inside.

The hybrid court docket — with each Cambodian and worldwide judges — was set as much as attempt the senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge, which worn out about two million individuals by means of hunger, torture, compelled labour and mass executions throughout its 1975-79 rule.

Regime chief Pol Pot, generally known as “Brother Quantity One”, by no means confronted justice, dying in 1998 earlier than the court docket was established.

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