BBC Online :Two top Khmer Rouge leaders have been jailed for life after being convicted by Cambodia’s UN-backed tribunal of crimes against humanity.Nuon Chea, 88, served as leader Pol Pot’s deputy and Khieu Samphan, 83, was the Maoist regime’s head of state.They are the first top-level leaders to be held accountable for its crimes.Up to two million people are thought to have died under the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime – of starvation and overwork or executed as enemies of the state.Judge Nil Nonn said the men were guilty of “extermination encompassing murder, political persecution, and other inhumane acts comprising forced transfer, enforced disappearances and attacks against human dignity”.Lawyers for the pair said they would appeal against the ruling. “It is unjust for my client. He did not know or commit many of these crimes,” Son Arun, a lawyer for Nuon Chea, told journalists.They will remain in detention while this takes place.The regime sought to create an agrarian society: cities were emptied and their residents forced to work on rural co-operatives. Many were worked to death while others starved as the economy imploded.During four violent years, the Khmer Rouge also killed all those it perceived as enemies – intellectuals, minorities, former officials – and their families.Nuon Chea was seen as an ideological driving force within the regime. Khieu Samphan was its public face.Prosecutors argued that they formulated policy and were complicit in its brutal execution. Over three years the court has heard from some of those who lost entire families to the regime.”My anger remains in my heart,” Suon Mom, 75, whose husband and four children starved to death, told the Associated Press news agency.
