Khmer Rouge to face trial

last updated 8 January 2015

Phnom Penh

The U.N. and Cambodia have finally reached a draft agreement to try top members of Pol Pot’s murderous Khmer Rouge regime for crimes against humanity. An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died from torture, execution, and starvation during the regime’s 1975–79 reign. No one was ever prosecuted for the horrors, and survivors have long been calling for justice. The Cambodian government has been tussling with the U.N. for five years about the legal standards for the trial, the nationality of the judges, and the location of the tribunal. Now that most of the issues have been resolved, indictments are expected for Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s second-in-command; Khieu Samphan, the former president of the Khmer Rouge; and Ta Mok, the military leader known as “the Butcher”—all of whom have been walking around free for decades. Pol Pot died of old age in 1998.