Three and a half decades after the rule of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge ended, a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal on Thursday sentenced two top leaders of the regime to life in prison on war crimes charges for their role in the 1970s.
The historic verdicts were announced against Khieu Samphan, the regime’s 83-year-old former head of state, and Nuon Chea, its 88-year-old chief ideologue the only two leaders of the regime left to stand trial.
The tribunal’s chief judge Nil Nonn asked both men to rise for the verdicts but the frail Nuon Chea said he was too weak to stand from his wheelchair and was allowed to remain seated.
There was no visible reaction from either of the accused as the judge said both men were found guilty of crimes against humanity, forced transfers, forced disappearances and attacks against human dignity and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The rulings can be appealed, but Nil Nonn told the court that “given the gravity of the crimes” both men would remain in detention.
The case, covering the forced exodus of millions of people from Cambodia’s towns and cities and a mass killing, is just part of the Cambodian story. Nearly a quarter of the population died under their rule, through a combination starvation, medical neglect, overwork and execution when the group held power in 1975-79.
Many have criticised the slow justice, and its cost. The tribunal, formally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and comprising of Cambodian and international jurists, began operations in 2006. It has since spent more than $200 million, yet it had convicted only one defendant prison director Kaing Guek Eav, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2011.
The current trial began in November 2011 and started out with four Khmer Rouge leaders. Former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary died in 2013, while his wife, Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, was deemed unfit to stand trial due to dementia in 2012. The group’s top leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.
