ABSTRACT

Comrade Duch has been on trial in Cambodia since February 2009 for supervising the torture and killings of some 16,000 men, women, and children at the notorious Khmer Rouge prison known as S-21 between 1975 and 1979. At the end of the hearings, the prosecution called for a “lengthy jail term” following evidence that Duch was guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The judges conducting the Khmer Rouge trials have limited the prosecution to the four most senior surviving party members in addition to Kaing Guek Eav, aka Comrade Duch, who is the least senior officer on trial. Co-prosecutor Chea Leang argues that Duch was “indifferent to the suffering of the victims” at S-21. As the key intelligence operative of the Khmer Rouge, Duch was, in Leang’s words, “the trusted man to identify supposed plots against the revolution and to root out enemies”.