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Khmer Rouge's chief torturer and jailer Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch - Source: Reuters -
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A notorious member of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" regime has been sentenced to 35 years in jail.
Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, was charged with murder, torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity by a UN-backed court which included former New Zealand Governor-General Silvia Cartwright.
Although sentenced to 35 years, Duch will serve only another 19 as he has already spent 11 years in detention and was given five years off for co-operating.
As Commandant of the prison known as S21, Duch was responsible for overseeing the torture and killing of more than 14,000 people.
His victims include the brother of New Zealander Rob Hamill, who was in Cambodia to hear the verdict.
Kerry Hamill was one of a handful of Westerners murdered by the Khmer Rouge. Hamill's yacht had strayed into Cambodian waters in 1979.
"This is very very important for the, I mean, our family obviously have a stake in this but for the people of Cambodia, this is a huge deal for the millions that suffered."
Duch was widely expected to receive the maximum sentence of life imprisonment by a joint UN-Cambodian court set up to prosecute the ultra-Maoist regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths that wiped out almost a quarter of Cambodia's population from 1975 to 1979.
Duch, a former maths teacher and now a born-again Christian, insists he was following orders to avoid death at the behest of the late Pol Pot, a French-educated engineer who led the regime and sought to return Cambodia to a year-zero peasant utopia.
Duch asked for forgiveness and wept during his 17-month trial but said nothing of the Khmer Rouge's motives and why so many people were allowed to die of starvation, exhaustion and disease, or by horrific methods of torture and execution.
Duch is the first of five of Pol Pot's former cadres indicted by the court. Facing genocide charges are former President Khieu Samphan, "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, ex-Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, a former Shakespeare scholar known as the "Khmer Rouge First Lady".
Many Cambodians fear that the ailing defendants could die before they see a courtroom and say the cases are so complex and politicised they may not even go to trial, which has fed allegations of high-level interference.
Mark Turner, an expert on Cambodia from the University of Canberra, said the composition and purpose of the tribunal was often in question and the government, which includes some former Khmer Rogue members, was in no hurry to speed up the hearings.
"One would suspect some people in government aren't too anxious to rake up the past," he said. "They might also be implicated. That's why this court has never been their priority."
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