Khmer Rouge torture chief weeps at "Killing Fields"

I just finished a very powerful story about the Cambodian Infamous "Killing Fields" and the preparation for the trial of one of it's torturer's, and what happened as he was taken to one of the "fields".

The chief torturer under the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" regime wept and prayed on Tuesday as he led the judges who will try him for crimes against humanity around the mass graves for some of its victims.

Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, accompanied 80 judges, lawyers and other officials of a U.N.-backed tribunal to the 129 graves, uncovered after a Vietnamese invasion sent the Khmer Rouge back to the jungles in 1979. "I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed children to death," a policeman told reporters after the four-hour tour. "He cried and apologized to the victims" in the former rice fields outside Phnom Penh, he said.

Some of the victims were from the regime's S-21 prison at the former Tuol Sleng high school in Phnom Penh run by Duch, now 66. About 14,000 people, including a few foreigners accused of being CIA spies, went into the jail to be tortured into confessing to working against a regime deemed responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people. Only a handful emerged alive.

Stacks of excavated skulls mark the area, is how this area is described in the story. This should be an "interesting" trial to "watch", and we will update if further stories are published about it!!


killing fields