Head of Jail from Khmer Rouge Regime Found Guilty for Crimes of War
Kaing Guek Eav a Khmer Rouge head of jail who is responsible and directly involved in the killing of thousands of victims was condemned to 35 years in prisons despite of the family’s of the victims who wanted life sentenced. For the relatives of the victims is bad news, because this means that Kaing Guek Eav also known as Duch will stay in prison for only 19 years which means that there is a chance for him to walk free again. After all the evil that he has done, evil that marked an entire generation of Cambodgian, this war criminal at the age of 67 years old should walk the earth free again.
“I’m shocked, as everyone is right now,” said a human rights lawyer, Theary Seng, after loosing her parents she has been working with the family’s of other victims and the survivals of the tragedy to make the justice system to put away the people responsible for this atrocity. “It’s just unacceptable to have a man who killed thousands of people serving just 19 years.”
Kaing Guek Eav was sentenced this Monday for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
For Cambodia is the first legal step in court, after 1.7 million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge, those people were executed or died working as slaves but also died of the lack of human necessity like food and medicine. The man responsible for this tragedy, the group leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 and the closest men to him, 4 senior group members are waiting to go to trial.
During the trial Duch said that he was the chief of Toul Sleng, a secret center of detention where more than 16, 000 souls were killed. Waterboarding, shocks and toenails pulling are just a few torture methods that were used in this death facility. The trail of the war criminal lasted 77 days.
Duch which was not a leading man in the regime and it was the only one who showed regret and accepted that the victims could visit him in jail and express their feelings, he even said that he could accept a public stoning. In the last day of the trial the defendant asked the court to release him and drop the charges which raises a lot of questions about his showing remorse.
Many people expected a harsher punishment and the sentence that was issued on Monday angered them.
“I can’t accept this,” said 46 years old Saodi Ouch through her tears, crying so much that she barely talked. “My family died … my older sister, my older brother. I’m the only one left.”
At the Toul Sleng detaining camp, Kaing Guek Eav assisted at every torture and execution being the man who signed the papers which sentenced to death thousands of people. In a particular case where three girls and six boys were imprisoned there he wrote an order to a guard and on the paper at the top said “Kill every last one”.
In 1979 the Khmer Rouge reign ended after four years of killing and destroying the nation. After the fall, Duch ran in the north of Cambodia changed his name and converted to the Christian Church. He was arrested in 1999 when a journalist from UK found him accidentally.
After ten years and 100 million dollars spent, the court itself was blamed for getting involved in the political business.
The Cambodian government tried to narrow down the number of suspects and introduced in the committee of judges a lot of Cambodians, Many officials from the actual government are the low level representative of Khmer Rouge.
Many people were thinking that Duch will not get life in prison sentence but nobody expected that he would get less than 35 years in prison for the horrible acts of genocide that he did.
Kaing Guek Eav was detained in a military prison and when the verdict came he got with 16 years less because of that, a verdict that made the crowd of victims and familys of the casualties very angry and frustrated.
“Now no one is going to have the energy to look at the second case,” said Theary Seng.
Do you think that this man who killed thousands of people willingly got the punishment that he deserved?
