Accused Cambodian begs forgiveness for terror role

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - The man accused of being the Khmer Rouge's chief torturer put down his prepared speech, removed his eyeglasses, and gazed at the courtroom audience yesterday as he pleaded for forgiveness from the country he helped terrorize three decades ago.

"At the beginning I only prayed to ask for forgiveness from my parents, but later I prayed to ask forgiveness from the whole nation," Kaing Guek Eav - better known as Duch - recounted on the second day of his trial before Cambodia's genocide tribunal.

Hundreds of spectators seated on the other side of a glass wall in the courtroom, including relatives of the regime's victims, listened intently.

The tribunal's proceedings are the first serious attempt to fix responsibility for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians from starvation, medical neglect, slavelike working conditions, and execution under the 1975-79 rule of the Khmer Rouge, whose top leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.

Duch, 66, is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as murder and torture and could face a maximum penalty of life in prison. Cambodia has no death penalty. He commanded the group's main S-21 prison, also known as Tuol Sleng, where as many as 16,000 men, women, and children are believed to have been brutalized before being sent to their deaths.

The indictment read out in court Monday contained wrenching descriptions of the torture and executions he allegedly supervised by Duch, including beatings, electrocutions, and dropping children to their deaths.

Yesterday, Duch got his first public opportunity to speak after prosecutors gave opening arguments. He said he tried to avoid becoming commander of Tuol Sleng, but once in the job, he feared for his family's lives if he did not carry out his duty to extract confessions from supposed enemies of the regime.

Nevertheless, he took responsibility "for crimes committed at S-21, especially the tortures and executions of the people there." He said he wanted "to express my deep regretfulness and my heartfelt sorrow" for all the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge.

Duch offered apologies to the victim's families and acknowledged that it may be too much to ask for immediate forgiveness for "serious crimes that cannot be tolerated."

"I would like you to please leave an open window for me to seek forgiveness," he pleaded, and he vowed to cooperate fully with the tribunal as the only "remedy that can help me to relieve all the sorrow."

Duch is the least senior of only five surviving leaders of the regime scheduled to go before the court. Critics allege that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has sought to limit the tribunal's scope because other potential defendants are now his political allies.

Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge officer, expressed disdain for the court yesterday during a speech in Cambodia's southwest, saying that adding defendants could spark renewed warfare and mocking the panel's budget troubles. He said he would prefer the court ran out of money "as soon as possible."

More on the tribunal, including webcasts of

proceedings, via http://go.philly.com/khmerEndText