Last Khmer Rouge leaders guilty of genocide, get life terms
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The last surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s, when their reign of terror was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, were convicted Friday by an international tribunal of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were top leaders in a regime that forced residents out of the cities into the countryside, where they laboured under brutal conditions in giant agricultural co-operatives and work projects. The communist Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of the late Pol Pot, sought to eliminate all traces of what they saw as corrupt bourgeois life, destroying most religious, financial and social institutions.
Nuon Chea (NOO’-ahn CHEE’-ah) and Khieu Samphan (KEE’-yoh sahm-PAHN’) were sentenced by the U.N.-assisted court to life in prison, the same punishment they are already serving after being convicted in a previous trial for crimes against humanity connected with forced transfers of people and mass disappearances. Cambodia has no death penalty.
Nuon Chea, 92, was considered the Khmer Rouge’s main ideologist and Pol Pot’s right-hand man, while Khieu Samphan, 87, served as the head of state, presenting a moderate veneer as the public face for the highly secretive group.