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A former Khmer Rouge commander convicted in February of the 1994 murders of three Western backpackers but on the run from authorities was arrested in Cambodia, an official told AFP. Cambodia's Supreme Court ordered one-time guerrilla Chhouk Rin jailed for the abduction and murder of an Australian, Briton and Frenchman earlier this year but authorities had not managed to capture the 51-year-old. "He was arrested this afternoon (Tuesday) at 1:00 pm (0600 GMT) in Oddar Meanchey province," interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said. Chhouk Rin was arrested in Trapeang Prasat district in northwestern Anlong Veng -- one of the final...

Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party that ruled Cambodia from 1976-1979. "Khmer Rouge" (or Khmer Reds) was the French rendering of the organization’s official name: the "Communist Party of Cambodia," later the "Party of Democratic Kampuchea" and also the "Communist Party of Kampuchea," or CPK. (Kampuchea is the local name for Cambodia.) Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar in what is now the province of Kompong Thong, Cambodia in 1925. He came from a prosperous farming family that in 1931 moved to the capital, Phnom Penh, where the young Pol Pot learned some of...

American Friends? HardlyBy Gordon LambFrontPageMagazine.com | June 5, 2003 When the first Quakers arrived in America in the late 17th century, they were thought of as heretics, sometimes witches and routinely bizarre. Theirs was a religion based on the ideas the individual is supreme, that the relationship between God and man is a very private affair not to be regulated by government or society, that temperance ("all things in moderation") is a noble way to live one's life. Above all, it prized peace and stated that violence should be avoided if at all possible.The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has mastered...

This month the Kerry Campaign abandoned one claim that John Kerry had made for years about his Vietnam War service and put another into question. The claim that has been dropped: that Kerry was in Cambodia at Christmastime in 1968. In a 1979 review of the movie Apocalypse Now in the Boston Herald, Kerry wrote, "I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 5 miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our Vietnamese allies." In a 1986 speech on the Senate floor, Kerry said, "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. . . . I...

Arn Chorn-Pond, the musician whose story is the focus of "The Flute Player." For Arn Chorn-Pond, heaven and hell are tightly woven in long dulcet melodies played on a bamboo flute that sweeps errant memories back into view.When he plays, he closes his eyes and rides the high notes back to his homeland, Cambodia, back to a youth spent struggling to survive in the notorious "killing fields."In 1975, when the communist Khmer Rouge regime took control of Cambodia, soldiers forced Chorn-Pond and millions of other Cambodians into concentration camps. An estimated 2 million civilians were executed, starved or worked to...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — "I say Cambodia is safe," said Ahmad Yahya, one of the most prominent Muslims in the country, addressing fears that Islamic militants could find a niche in this unruly land. "But who knows?" With its porous borders, its corruption, its hide-and-seek legal system and its disorganized Muslim community, some analysts say, this small Southeast Asian country could easily become a refuge and a breeding ground for terrorists. "I told the ambassador, don't worry about our people," Mr. Yahya said, referring to the American envoy. "Our people I can guarantee. But the Bangladeshis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Saudis and...