KEY POINTS:
He was a maths teacher turned torturer, a one-time college principal who oversaw the Khmer Rouge regime's interrogation and abuse of thousands of innocent people.
When the regime was ousted from power, having perpetrated one of the most brutal genocides in history, he converted to Christianity and returned to teaching.
For decades it seemed Kang Kek Ieu would escape justice.
But yesterday, in a historic move, the 64-year-old also known as "Comrade Duch" was charged with crimes against humanity by a United Nations-backed tribunal in Cambodia - the first of the "Killing Fields" regime's leaders to be brought before a court.
The tribunal made up of international and Cambodian judges spent the day interviewing Duch, who headed the notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, and then issued a statement that said: "The Co-Investigating Judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia have charged Kang Kek Ieu, alias Duch, for crimes against humanity and have placed him in provisional detention."
The decision to finally charge Duch is a vital milestone in the efforts to bring the surviving Khmer Rouge leadership to justice. The reaction in Cambodia that Duch had alone been finally brought before the judges was telling. Chum Mey, one of just seven people from an estimated 20,000 known to have survived incarceration at the prison, said: "I want to confront him to ask who gave him the orders to kill the Cambodian people."
Mey, 77, said he was delighted the judicial process finally appeared to be working. But he said he also feared Duch might seek to shift responsibility to other senior Khmer Rouge leaders, now dead.
"I want to hear how he will answer before the court, or if he will just blame everything on the ghosts of Pol Pot and Ta Mok," he said.
The Khmer Rouge, headed by Pol Pot, who died in his jungle hideout in 1998, swept to power in 1975. Almost immediately the leaders of the movement, whose ideology mixed influences from Vietnam, China and France with a homespun nationalism, embarked upon a radical restructuring of the nation that effectively turned into genocide.
Precisely how many people were killed or died from starvation or disease is unknown. Estimates range from between 1 million and 3 million, with most respected organisations opting for a figure between 1.4 million and 2.2 million. Given that Cambodia had a population of just around 7 million people when the Khmer Rouge seized power, the genocide was proportionally one of the biggest in the world.
At the heart of this regime of horror lay an industrial-scale killing operation. Central to this was the concentration camp at Tuol Sleng, a former school in the centre of the capital, controlled by the Khmer Rouge's special branch known as the Santebal and overseen by Duch.
At Tuol Sleng, known by the regime as S-21, Duch supervised the interrogations of thousands of people. A list of rules for prisoners, still attached to the wall of the prison and poorly translated into English, warned them against committing offences that would result in punishment. The 10th and final rule read: "If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either 10 lashes or five shocks of electric discharge."
Under Duch's supervision scrupulous records were kept and everyone was photographed. Today those black and white images stare from the walls of Tuol Sleng - now a museum.
In her book When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, journalist Elizabeth Becker said: "Duch oversaw a precise department of death. His guards dutifully photographed the prisoners upon arrival and photographed them at or near death, whether their throats were slit, their bodies otherwise mutilated, or so thin from torture and near starvation that they were beyond recognition. The photographs were part of the files to prove the enemies of the state had been killed."
Like many member of the Khmer Rouge, Duch had an academic background. As a student he had excelled at maths and after becoming a teacher he rose to the position of deputy head of a regional college. He was jailed for his left-leaning views and opposition to the corruption that existed in Cambodia in the sixties. By 1970, he had fled to the jungles and joined the guerrilla movement, running one of its prison camps for suspected enemies even before it had seized power.
When the regime was forced from power, driven into the jungles of northwestern Cambodia by an invading army from Vietnam in January 1979, Duch disappeared from public view, like most of the other senior figures. Using various adopted names, he lived in a Khmer Rouge stronghold until 1999 when he was discovered by journalists. He had ended his association with the regime, had been converted to Christianity by missionaries and was working as a volunteer for the charities World Vision and the American Refugee Committee.
When he was interviewed that year by journalists, Duch initially admitted participating in the activities at Tuol Sleng, saying that he was deeply sorry for the killings and was willing to face an international tribunal and provide evidence against others.
He subsequently told a Government interrogator: "I was under other people's command, and I would have died if I disobeyed it. I did it without any pleasure."
Duch is one of five former Khmer Rouge leaders the tribunal's prosecutors have submitted to the investigating judges for further investigation. The names of the other four have not yet been released, though there is widespread belief in Cambodia that they are Nuon Chea, one of the movement's chief ideologues, Ieng Sary, the regime's former foreign minister, Khieu Samphan, the former head of state and Meas Muth, a son-in-law of Pol Pot's military chief Ta Mok, who died last year. They live openly in Cambodia, though some are in declining health.
Today a number of former regime officials are members of the current Cambodian Government.
TROUBLED HISTORY
1975: Cambodian leader Lon Nol is overthrown by the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot.
1975-79: Year Zero is declared. Money, private property, education and religion are abolished; 1.7 million people die in the Killing Fields (21 per cent of the population).
1980: Vietnam takes Phnom Penh and installs new Government. Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge fighters flee.
1985: Hun Sen becomes Prime Minister.
1991: King Sihanouk becomes head of state under UN-brokered deal after 13 years' exile.
1998: Pol Pot dies.
2004: Sihanouk abdicates. Parliament ratifies plan for tribunal to try Khmer Rouge leaders.
2007: Kang Kek Ieu, known as Duch, becomes the first surviving Khmer Rouge leader to be charged.
SAVED BY THE ART OF WAR
It was art that ultimately saved Vann Nath from the murderous clutches of the Khmer Rouge.
By taking the job of painting portraits and sculpting busts of Pol Pot, he stopped the supremo's henchmen from taking his life.
Now the 63-year-old has the dubious plaudit of being one of three living survivors of the notorious S-21 prison, presided over by the now indicted Duch.
"I allowed them to tie me like a pig" is how he remembers his 1977 arrest in his memoir, A Cambodian Prison Portrait. He never discovered the grounds for his detention, which lasted a year.
"They would handcuff and blindfold the prisoners before they left the room. Sometimes, some of the prisoners came back with wounds or blood on their bodies, while others disappeared," Nath wrote.
"I could hear screams of pain from every corner of the prison. I felt a twinge of pain in my body at each scream."
His paintbrush spared him the torture his fellow prisoners were suffering, but not the anguish of watching his cellmates die.
"If a prisoner died in the morning, they would not take him out until night," he said.
And it was the paintbrush to which he returned when he became a free man. Canvases capturing S-21's horrors now line the walls of the Cambodian Genocide Museum and last month a new exhibition opened in the capital, Phnom Penh, of 10 new Nath works, all painted this year.
- INDEPENDENT
