ABSTRACT
On July 26, 2010, Kaing Guek Eav was convicted by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) of crimes against humanity, which the court defined as “persecution on political grounds … incorporating various other crimes against humanity, including extermination, imprisonment and torture,” as well as “numerous grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.” Kaing, better known by his nom de guerre Duch, committed these crimes in his position as the commandant of the Khmer Rouge’s secret S-21 prison. As the court noted:
The Chamber found that every individual detained within S-21 was destined for execution in accordance with the Communist Party of Kampuchea policy to “smash” all enemies. In addition to mass executions, many detainees died as a result of torture and their conditions of detention. Although finding a minimum of 12,272 individuals to have been detained and executed at S-21 on the basis of prisoner lists, the Chamber indicated that the actual number of detainees is likely to have been considerably greater.
(Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, 2010)