PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - The man accused of overseeing the torture and execution of enemies of Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge rulers faced scores of his victims Monday, as the first trial for one of the communist group's leaders opened at a genocide tribunal.
Victims of the 1975-79 regime, some missing limbs, mixed with earnest law students in a modern courtroom to watch the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, who ran the main prison where every inmate "was destined for execution," according to the indictment.
The 66-year-old defendant, widely known as Duch, betrayed no emotion as court officials read the litany of horrors that took several hours and was broadcast live nationwide.
"Several witnesses said that prisoners were killed using steel clubs, cart axles and water pipes to hit the base of their necks," the indictment said. "Prisoners were then kicked into the pits, where their handcuffs were removed. Finally the guards either cut open their bellies or their throats. After the executions were complete, the guards covered the pits."
Despite the emotional weight of the moment, a polite calm prevailed among the 500 spectators and the robed judges and lawyers, who conducted the proceedings on a stage behind a glass wall.
The U.N.-backed tribunal on the outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh, is seeking to establish responsibility for the reign of terror under Pol Pot, the group's leader who died in 1998. An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died of starvation, medical neglect, slave-like working conditions and execution under the Khmer Rouge, which ruled from 1975 to 1979.
Duch is charged with committing crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as torture and homicide. He ran the group's main prison, the notorious torture center known as S-21, or Tuol Sleng, in Phnom Penh. As many as 16,000 men, women and children were brutally tortured there before being sent to their deaths.
Duch holds the distinction of being not only the first member of the Khmer Rouge to face trial for the regime's atrocities, but also the only one of five set to be tried to express remorse or take responsibility for his actions.
Five hundred seats are allotted for the public in the auditorium-like courtroom, and scores of survivors traveled from around the country to witness the trial.
After all the politics and procedural wrangling that delayed a trial for years, it was a dramatic moment when the five crimson-robed judges took their seats on the top tier of a podium to launch the proceedings.
"Cambodians have been waiting 30 years for the Khmer Rouge to be tried for the violence and suffering they inflicted upon the population," said Alex Hinton, director of Rutgers University's Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. "That day has arrived."
Duch's job was to extract confessions of counterrevolutionary activity, but "every prisoner who arrived at S-21 was destined for execution," said the indictment, which was issued last year when Duch was formally charged.
"Interrogators used several forms of torture in order to extract confessions from prisoners. According to Duch, only four methods of torture were allowed: beating, electrocution, placing a plastic bag over the head and pouring water into the nose." It says he also acknowledged that he knew about the practice of puncturing or removing finger and toenails, and that there was evidence that "at least one prisoner was force-fed excrement."
Execution inevitably followed torture and was equally gruesome. The indictment alleges that "some prisoners were killed by having large quantities of blood withdrawn by medics," leaving them unconscious and gasping.
Duch's French lawyer, Francois Roux, said last month that his client wished "to ask forgiveness from the victims, but also from the Cambodian people. He will do so publicly. This is the very least he owes the victims."
Duch disappeared after the group fell from power, living under two other names. He returned to teaching and converted to Christianity before he was discovered by chance by a British journalist in the Cambodian countryside in 1999.
Since then he has been in detention awaiting trial. Only now, after years of political and procedural wrangling, is his case ready to be heard.
Human rights groups want the number of defendants increased beyond Duch and the four senior Khmer Rouge leaders being held for trial in the next year or so.
Critics of the tribunal also charge that Cambodia's government has sought to limit its scope because other suspects are now loyal to Prime Minister Hun Sen, and to arrest them could be politically awkward.
Cambodian state television and radio were broadcasting Monday's proceedings live, and 70 percent of the country's 14.3 million people were expected to tune in, Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said. The verdict at the end of the trial is also expected to be broadcast live.
The trial resumes Tuesday.
