Free Republic

(PHNOM PENH, Cambodia) — Nuon Chea, the chief ideologue of the communist Khmer Rouge regime that destroyed a generation of Cambodians, died Sunday, the country’s U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal said. He was 93. Nuon Chea was known as Brother No. 2, the right-hand man of Pol Pot, the leader of the regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The group’s fanatical efforts to realize a utopian society led to the death of some 1.7 million people — more than a quarter of the country’s population at the time — from starvation, disease, overwork and executions. Researchers believe Nuon Chea was...

CHOEUNG EK, Cambodia (Reuters) - 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...