17 February,2009 01:06 PM IST | | AP
The chief of a notorious torture center goes before Cambodia's genocide tribunal on Tuesday for its first trial over the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime more than three decades ago.
Kaing Guek Eav - better known as Duch, who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh - is charged with crimes against humanity, and is this first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the UN-assisted tribunal. The hearing opening today was for procedural matters, and testimony was expected to begin only in late March.
Duch, 66, is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape at S-21 prison - formerly a school - where up to 16,000 men, women and children were held and tortured, before being put to death.
When the communist Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 after five years of bitter civil war, many of their countrymen thought peace was at hand. But in their effort to remake society, they instituted a reign of terror that lasted nearly four years, until ended by an invasion by neighbouring Vietnam.
Many victims feared that all the Khmer Rouge leaders would die before ever facing justice, and getting even one of them on trial is seen as a breakthrough.
