Reuters, Phnom Penh :
A U.N.-backed court found two leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge guilty of genocide on Friday, almost four decades after the ultra-Maoist regime which oversaw the “Killing Fields” was overthrown.
Most of the victims of the 1975-79 regime died of starvation, torture, exhaustion or disease in labor camps or were bludgeoned to death during mass executions.
Between 1.7 and 2.2 million people, almost a quarter of the population, died during the 1975 to 1979 rule of the Khmer Rouge.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), said Khmer Rouge “Brother Number Two”, Nuon Chea, 92, and former President Khieu Samphan, 87, were guilty of genocide against the Cham Muslim minority and Vietnamese people, and of various crimes against humanity.
The court sentenced them to life in prison. Both men denied the charges.
They were already serving life sentences for 2014 convictions for crimes against humanity, in connection with the forced evacuation of the capital Phnom Penh after they took power under their notorious leader Pol Pot in 1975.
There had been debate for years among legal experts at to whether the killings by the Khmer Rouge constituted genocide, as by far the majority of their victims were fellow Cambodians.
The court found that during their rule, the Khmer Rouge had a policy to target Cham and Vietnamese people to create “an atheistic and homogenous society without class divisions”, Judge Nil Nonn said in the verdict.
A U.N.-backed court found two leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge guilty of genocide on Friday, almost four decades after the ultra-Maoist regime which oversaw the “Killing Fields” was overthrown.
Most of the victims of the 1975-79 regime died of starvation, torture, exhaustion or disease in labor camps or were bludgeoned to death during mass executions.
Between 1.7 and 2.2 million people, almost a quarter of the population, died during the 1975 to 1979 rule of the Khmer Rouge.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), said Khmer Rouge “Brother Number Two”, Nuon Chea, 92, and former President Khieu Samphan, 87, were guilty of genocide against the Cham Muslim minority and Vietnamese people, and of various crimes against humanity.
The court sentenced them to life in prison. Both men denied the charges.
They were already serving life sentences for 2014 convictions for crimes against humanity, in connection with the forced evacuation of the capital Phnom Penh after they took power under their notorious leader Pol Pot in 1975.
There had been debate for years among legal experts at to whether the killings by the Khmer Rouge constituted genocide, as by far the majority of their victims were fellow Cambodians.
The court found that during their rule, the Khmer Rouge had a policy to target Cham and Vietnamese people to create “an atheistic and homogenous society without class divisions”, Judge Nil Nonn said in the verdict.
