By Ek Madra
PHNOM PENH, July 21 (Reuters) - Former Khmer Rouge military chief Ta Mok, who died on Friday, was one of the most brutal leaders of Cambodia's "Killing Fields" regime, under which an estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died.
Historians of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist 1975-1979 rule say he oversaw massive and bloody purges of party cadres and ordinary people, a role which later earned him the nickname "The Butcher".
To the last, however, the one-legged 82-year-old protested his innocence, saying he was merely a simple soldier maligned by the international media.
His real responsibilities as military commander lay in building roads, bridges and dams, as well as overseeing rice planting and poultry farming, he said in a statement released by his lawyer as he lay in a coma in a military hospital last week.
"Please inform the whole world that I have never killed anyone," he said.
Although his supporters in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng, where Pol Pot died in 1998, are likely to mourn him, most Cambodians will see his death as an escape from justice at the hands of the country's long-awaited genocide trial. Unlike most of Pol Pot's former henchmen, who remain free men, Ta Mok had been in prison since 1999, accused by a military court of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
A joint United Nations-Cambodian tribunal on the Khmer Rouge atrocities started work last month and is expected to be up and running in full next year.
LIFELONG FIGHTER
Born Ong Choeung, he adopted the nom de guerre Ta Mok on joining the nascent Cambodian communist movement in the 1960s, as the jungle-clad southeast Asian nation was sucked slowly into the U.S. war in neighbouring Vietnam.
Rising swiftly through the guerrilla ranks, he emerged as a fearsome leader and warrior -- his reputation for toughness enhanced after losing the lower half of a leg in fighting in the early 1970s.
After the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, he established himself as Pol Pot's enforcer, dispatching cadres to parts of the country deemed insufficiently committed to the "Year Zero" revolution or too soft on traditional enemy Vietnam.
He was also the leader most strongly against reintroducing money, outlawed in the early days of power to reinforce the purity of the agrarian revolution.
A Vietnamese invasion in 1979 put paid to the Khmer Rouge's years in power, but Ta Mok remained a major figure in the rump guerrilla movement, operating from his mountain base at Anlong Veng on the Thai border.
As the Khmer Rouge crumbled in 1997, he seized control of the organisation in an internal putsch and named himself leader.
Pol Pot, who was arrested and appeared at a Khmer Rouge show trial a year later, died in his custody.
While other senior Khmer Rouge cadres defected in 1998, signalling the movement's final demise, Ta Mok held out as a self-styled jungle warlord until he was captured and brought to Phnom Penh in 1999.
He remained in military custody ever since, along with former comrade Kang Khek Ieu -- also known as Duch -- the head of Phnom Penh's notorious Tuol Sleng S-21 interrogation centre.
Historians of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist 1975-1979 rule say he oversaw massive and bloody purges of party cadres and ordinary people, a role which later earned him the nickname "The Butcher".
To the last, however, the one-legged 82-year-old protested his innocence, saying he was merely a simple soldier maligned by the international media.
His real responsibilities as military commander lay in building roads, bridges and dams, as well as overseeing rice planting and poultry farming, he said in a statement released by his lawyer as he lay in a coma in a military hospital last week.
"Please inform the whole world that I have never killed anyone," he said.
Although his supporters in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng, where Pol Pot died in 1998, are likely to mourn him, most Cambodians will see his death as an escape from justice at the hands of the country's long-awaited genocide trial. Unlike most of Pol Pot's former henchmen, who remain free men, Ta Mok had been in prison since 1999, accused by a military court of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
A joint United Nations-Cambodian tribunal on the Khmer Rouge atrocities started work last month and is expected to be up and running in full next year.
LIFELONG FIGHTER
Born Ong Choeung, he adopted the nom de guerre Ta Mok on joining the nascent Cambodian communist movement in the 1960s, as the jungle-clad southeast Asian nation was sucked slowly into the U.S. war in neighbouring Vietnam.
Rising swiftly through the guerrilla ranks, he emerged as a fearsome leader and warrior -- his reputation for toughness enhanced after losing the lower half of a leg in fighting in the early 1970s.
After the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, he established himself as Pol Pot's enforcer, dispatching cadres to parts of the country deemed insufficiently committed to the "Year Zero" revolution or too soft on traditional enemy Vietnam.
He was also the leader most strongly against reintroducing money, outlawed in the early days of power to reinforce the purity of the agrarian revolution.
A Vietnamese invasion in 1979 put paid to the Khmer Rouge's years in power, but Ta Mok remained a major figure in the rump guerrilla movement, operating from his mountain base at Anlong Veng on the Thai border.
As the Khmer Rouge crumbled in 1997, he seized control of the organisation in an internal putsch and named himself leader.
Pol Pot, who was arrested and appeared at a Khmer Rouge show trial a year later, died in his custody.
While other senior Khmer Rouge cadres defected in 1998, signalling the movement's final demise, Ta Mok held out as a self-styled jungle warlord until he was captured and brought to Phnom Penh in 1999.
He remained in military custody ever since, along with former comrade Kang Khek Ieu -- also known as Duch -- the head of Phnom Penh's notorious Tuol Sleng S-21 interrogation centre.
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