[ Cambodia’s Duch Gets 35 Year Sentence ]
[ Mixed Feelings After Sentencing of Khmer Rouge Prison Chief ]
Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav, alias “Duch,” one of the most notorious killers under Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, was convicted on Monday of crimes against humanity including extermination, murder, enslavement, and a litany of other “grave breaches of the Geneva Convention.”He was given a single sentence of 35 years’ imprisonment by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and will serve 19 years of that. The sentence was reduced to account for time already served during eight years of “illegal detention” by the military court, from 1999 through 2007.
While the ECCC described his crimes perpetrated against at least 12,273 victims “shocking and heinous,” the Chamber said the decision on the severity of the sentence took into account the “entirety of the circumstances of the case.”
These circumstances included Duch’s cooperation with the Chamber, his admission of responsibility, and the coercive environment under the communist regime at the time, in addition to his “potential for rehabilitation” and his “limited expression of remorse.”
Duch was convicted on international offenses but not under the Cambodian penal code since the “Chamber was divided on the question of whether responsibility for these crimes had been extinguished before the ECCC investigation of the accused commenced.” In the absence of a majority opinion, the Chamber made no decision regarding violations of domestic law.
Throughout the 73-minute summary judgment and sentencing, Duch sat, then stood in the docket looking focused, but with no visible sign of emotion on his face. He made no reaction when the sentence was read out.
The Khmer Rouge communist regime is held responsible for nearly 2 million deaths in just four years during 1975–1979.
Duch was first the deputy, then chairman, of S-21, a security center tasked with “smashing”—the interrogation and execution of persons perceived as enemies of the state or spies.
The court found that Duch had significant authority at S-21 and showed a high degree of “efficiency and zeal” in carrying out his duties.
Duch became the first person to be sentenced under the United Nations-backed ECCC tribunal, which was established in 2003 to bring to trial senior leaders and those most responsible for serious violations of Cambodian and international law committed during the Khmer Rouge rule.
