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Khmer Rouge's chief torturer and jailer Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch - Source: Reuters
The Khmer Rouge's chief torturer and jailer had to kill or be
killed and operate like an obedient machine, his lawyer said in
defending the first member of Cambodia's murderous regime to face
justice.
In the final two days of testimony in the UN-backed war crimes
tribunal, a lawyer for the commander of the Khmer Rouge's notorious
S-21 prison said his client's life was at stake when he ordered the
murder of more than 14,000 people in the 1970s.
Speaking a day after prosecutors asked the court to sentence Kaing
Guek Eav, better known as Duch, to 40 years in prison, the lawyer
said the tribunal should show leniency because the 67-year-old
former maths teacher had fully cooperated.
"Without Duch, the trial could not have unfolded if he, like
others, had decided to remain in silence," Francois Roux, Duch's
lawyer, told a courtroom packed with more than 600 people,
including many survivors of the ultra-communist regime blamed for
1.7 million deaths in 1975-79.
"The accused was absolutely, himself, in the hands of the party.
And in fact, he had to operate like a machine, an obedient
machine," said Roux.
"He himself was in a situation where he had to choose to kill or
be killed."
"We do not wish our client to be the scapegoat," he added.
Duch is scheduled to take the stand again on Friday on the final
day of the trial. A verdict is expected by March.
He is accused of crimes against humanity, enslavement, torture,
sexual abuses and other inhumane acts as commander of Tuol Sleng
prison, a converted high school also known as S-21, during one of
the darkest chapters of the 20th century.
Only seven of 14,000 people who passed through S-21 survived.
Prosecutors have urged the tribunal's five-judge panel to reject
Duch's assertion he had little choice but to carry out orders,
saying Duch was ideologically of the same mind as the Khmer Rouge
leaders and did nothing to stop prison guards from inflicting
rampant torture.
Quarter of population died
Lead prosecutor William Smith told the court this week "the accused
was neither a prisoner, nor a hostage, nor a victim. He was an
idealist, a revolutionary, a crusader prepared to torture and kill
willingly for the good of the revolution."
The tribunal seeks justice for nearly a quarter of Cambodia's
population who perished from execution, overwork or torture during
the Khmer Rouge's agrarian revolution, which ended with the 1979
invasion by Vietnam.
Duch faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Smith said he should get 40 years. Cambodia does not have
capital punishment.
Now a born-again Christian, Duch expressed excruciating remorse for
the S-21 victims, most of them tortured and forced to confess to
spying and other crimes before they were bludgeoned to death at the
Killing Fields execution sites.
Witnesses in 72 days of hearings spoke of beatings with metal
pipes, electrocution, near-starvation, violent rape and prisoners
forced to eat their own excrement.
Duch has asked if he could apologise in person to his victims'
families, and has said he was convinced he was fighting to free
Cambodia from US imperialism during the Vietnam War.
Four other senior Khmer Rouge cadres are in custody awaiting
trial.
They are ex-president Khieu Samphan, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, his wife Khieu Thirith and Brother Number Two Nuon Chea.
Unlike Duch, they have not publicly apologised.
Pol Pot, architect of the Khmer Rouge's Year Zero peasant
revolution, was captured in 1997 and died in April 1998.
The chamber of three Cambodian and two foreign judges - known as
the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia - requires
four to agree on a verdict.
