Cambodia: Kaing Guek Eav, ruthless Khmer commander, has died

Khmer Rouge commander Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, Pol Pot’s chief executioner and security chief who oversaw the mass murder of at least 14,000 Cambodians at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, died at the age of 77. years.

The sentences

Kaing Guek Eav was the first member of the Khmer Rouge leadership to face trial for his role in a regime charged with at least 1.7 million deaths in Cambodia’s death camps between 1975 and 1979. He was hospitalized in the United States. Khmer Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh, Khmer Rouge court spokesman Neth Pheaktra reported. No further details were provided on the cause of death, but the former commander had been ill for years. In 2010, a United Nations court found him guilty of mass murder, torture and crimes against humanity at Tuol Sleng Prison, Phnom Penh’s former high school. Kaing Guek Eav was sentenced to life in prison two years after his appeal that he was just a young civil servant following orders was denied.