Khmer Rouge prison chief gets life in appeal verdict

Feb 3, 2012, 3:59 GMT

Phnom Penh - Former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Comrade Duch, saw his sentence for crimes against humanity and war crimes raised to life in an appeal judgement at Cambodia's Khmer Rouge tribunal on Friday.

Supreme court chamber president Kong Srim described Duch's crimes when he was in charge of the Khmer Rouge's S-21 torture centre in Phnom Penh as 'undoubtedly among the worst in recorded human history.'

In ruling on Duch's appeal, the court maintained the earlier guilty verdicts and added convictions for extermination, which includes murder, as well as for enslavement, imprisonment, torture and other 'inhuman acts.'

Those separate convictions had previously been bundled into one conviction for persecution, which is a crime against humanity.

The extra convictions gave the court reason to increase the sentence, replacing Duch's previous 35-year sentence with life in prison.

'Kaing Guek Eav commanded and operated this factory of death for more than three years. He is responsible for the merciless termination of at least 12,272 individuals,' Kong Srim said.

The judgement cannot be appealed and marks the end of the tribunal's first case.

Duch was judged to have already served 12 years and 269 days of his sentence in pre-trial detention. Lawyers said the former maths teacher, who showed no emotion at sentencing, could be eligible for parole in eight years.

Case co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley told reporters, however, that he anticipated the 69-year-old would serve out his life term.

Deputy Prime Minister Sok An welcomed the ruling, saying it was 'a historic day' for both Cambodia and humanity.

'I want to say to the survivors of S-21 and to the relatives and friends of those who were imprisoned there and who did not survive: today the people of Cambodia and all the world remember those who died,' he said.

Lawyers also broadly welcomed the sentence. Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang said, 'We can see that justice is now done after 30 years and impunity is already abolished.'

French civil party lawyer Martine Jacquin, who represented some of the victims, also supported the verdict.

'Duch is a person who systematically killed 12,000 people. We have everybody's names,' she said. 'That's 80 people killed every day. S-21 was a place you didn't come out of alive.'

But some rights groups and observers expressed concern over the court's decision to remove an earlier reduction of Duch's sentence by five years. The reduction had been to compensate for time spent in illegal detention before his trial.

Two of the court's seven judges dissented on that part of the ruling, saying 'the deprivation of liberty was extreme by international standards.'

Amnesty International's Rupert Abbott criticized the removal of the five-year reduction, saying the mitigation had been a 'positive message for the Cambodian justice system that everyone has human rights.'

Some civil party lawyers also expressed dissatisfaction that requests for further victim reparations were rejected, such as the institution of national commemoration days.

Other requests, such as the construction of a memorial stupa, were judged by the court to require excessive finance.

Victims of the regime and relatives travelled to the so-called killing fields of Choeung Ek following Friday's verdict, to pay tribute to those who died. On Thursday, two of the few survivors of S-21 itself had appealed for Duch to be given a stiffer sentence. Both were present at the court to hear the verdict.

The United Nations-backed tribunal sentenced Duch to 35 years in July 2010. With mitigating factors, including a five-year reduction of his sentence for illegal detention, that had meant Duch would have served 19 years. Both sides appealed.

The tribunal is investigating crimes against humanity during the Maoist Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule, during which 1.7 million to 2.2 million people died, according to estimates.

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