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PHNOM PENH - Chief Khmer Rouge jailer Duch appeared before Cambodia's "Killing Fields" tribunal yesterday, the first of Pol Pot's henchmen to be questioned over the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.
Duch, also know as Kang Kek Ieu, has confessed to committing multiple atrocities during this time as head of Phnom Penh's notorious Tuol Sleng, or S-21, interrogation centre.
He is expected to be a key witness in the trial of other senior Khmer Rouge cadres accused of beingresponsible for the "Killing Fields" atrocities committed by Pol Pot's regime.
The 65-year-old, who has been in prison in the southeast Asiannation's capital since 1999, faced investigating judges at a closed-door meeting attended by his lawyer and translator, a spokesman for the joint Cambodian-United Nations tribunal said.
The long-awaited US$56.3 million ($73 million) tribunal into atrocities committed during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 reign of terror has its own detention centre on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
It remains unclear whether Duch will be transferred to the purpose-built prison while Cambodian and international judges investigate prosecution allegations.
At least 14,000 people deemed to be opponents of Pol Pot's "Year Zero" revolution passed through Tuol Sleng's barbed-wire gates.
Fewer than 10 are thought to have lived to tell the tale.
Most victims were tortured and forced to confess to a variety of crimes - mainly being CIA spies - before being bludgeoned to death in a fieldon the outskirts of the city.
Women, children and even babies were among those butchered.
Last month, prosecutors lodged formal cases against five suspects, who have not been named.
Besides Duch, they are widely thought to be "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, former President Khieu Samphan and Meas Muth, a son-in-law of Pol Pot's military chief Ta Mok, who died last year.
The allegations against the five "constitute crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, homicide, torture and religious persecution", the prosecutors said in a report to investigating judges who will decide whether charges are laid.
The prosecutors submitted thousands of pages of Khmer Rouge-era documents, statements from more than 350 witnesses and the locations of more than 40 undisturbed mass graves.
The United Nations-backed court has been plagued by delays and arguments between local and international legal officials, who only agreed in June on the joint court's internal rules.
The trials will be conducted under a modified form of Cambodia'sFrench-based judicial system,with domestic and international judges and prosecutors working jointly to try to guarantee the courts' independence.
Pol Pot, whose four-year reign of terror was brought to an end in 1979 by a Vietnamese invasion, died in April 1998 in Along Veng, a final Khmer Rouge redoubt in jungle-clad mountains along the Thai border.
- REUTERS
