The Khmer Rouge’s main jail chief admitted for the first time before Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes tribunal yesterday that he had personally tortured a prisoner.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, is on trial for overseeing the torture and execution of about 15,000 people at Tuol Sleng detention center in the late 1970s.
Duch’s confession came a day after a guard, Saom Meth, told the court that he saw his boss beat an inmate with a rattan stick.
“Regarding the testimony of comrade Meth, in general, it is true,” Duch told the court.
“The point that I went to torture a prisoner at Tuy [an interrogator’s] location, I would not deny it,” the 66-year-old former math teacher said.
But Duch said the most serious crime he committed was the “political indoctrination” of his staff at the prison, also known as S-21, to make them consider the inmates as enemies of the Khmer Rouge party.
“That was the most serious crime that I committed, and that I am responsible for more than 10,000 lives lost at S-21,” he said, adding that he was also “the one who initiated” the arrest of many people.
“All the crimes committed at S-21, regardless of forms of torture used and regardless whether the special forces used or transported the prisoners to be executed somewhere else, they had to do it because of my instruction,” he said.
“I do not deny all these crimes, I accept them,” Duch said, adding that he also used to enter a room where a “very humble” Briton was being interrogated.
Saom Meth had earlier told the court yesterday that he heard an ex-colleague report to record-keepers that many foreign prisoners, including Americans, were burned on the street.
The prison in the capital Phnom Penh was at the center of the Khmer Rouge’s brutal campaign of repression and was later turned into a genocide museum after the movement was overthrown by forces backed by Vietnam.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS