PROFILE: Who is Comrade Duch?

Feb 3, 2012, 4:48 GMT

Phnom Penh - Kaing Guek Eav, alias Comrade Duch, was the head of the Khmer Rouge's torture centre S-21.

Born in the central province of Kampong Thom in November 1942, Duch became a maths teacher in 1965 before his arrest in 1968 as a suspected member of the anti-government Khmer Rouge. He was jailed for more than a year without trial.

Freed in 1970 when King Norodom Sihanouk was overthrown, Duch joined the Khmer Rouge insurgency, which had begun to control pockets of Cambodia.

Duch is thought to have headed a security centre north of Phnom Penh, known as M-13, prior to becoming deputy head of S-21 in 1975, the year the Khmer Rouge took full control of Cambodia.

When S-21's boss was removed from his position the following year and later killed, Duch took over the facility. He claims he tried to refuse the role.

At least 15,000 people were tortured and executed at the former high school between 1975-79.

The prison chief escaped west towards the Thai border when Vietnamese and Cambodian forces drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979.

He is thought to have resumed teaching in the early 1990s in the western part of the country, where many of the deposed Khmer Rouge took refuge.

Following the death of his wife during a burglary in 1995, he converted to Christianity.

The Khmer Rouge movement finally dissolved in the late 1990s. In 1999, Duch was tracked down where he was living in western Cambodia by a photojournalist, and detained by authorities.

His trial started in early 2009. He was found guilty by a UN-backed tribunal of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in July 2010.

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