PHNOM PENH (AFP)
Court officials are seen during the hearing of former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav (Duch) at the Extraodinary Chambers in the courts of Cambodia on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Legal arguments entered their second day Wednesday as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge court held its opening public session, hearing an appeal for the release of the regime's prison chief from detention. (AFP)Legal arguments entered their second day Wednesday as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge court held its opening public session, hearing an appeal for the release of the regime's prison chief from detention.
After a day of defence arguments, prosecutors worked to keep top Khmer Rouge interrogator Duch behind bars, in what many see as a landmark moment for a country trying to come to terms with the brutal 1970s regime.
"(Duch) at least bears some direct responsibility in the detention, torture and death of some 14,000 men, women and children," said co-prosecutor Robert Petit of the man accused of running the regime's most terrifying killing machine.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, allegedly oversaw the torture and extermination of thousands of men, women and children at the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng prison during the regime's 1975-1979 rule.
He was arrested by the tribunal in July, becoming the first top Khmer Rouge cadre to be detained and charged with crimes against humanity ahead of a trial expected to take place next year.
Sitting grim-faced before the panel of five judges who will rule on his release Duch, a 65 year-old former maths teacher, appeared to be closely following Petit's argument, occasionally glancing around the court chamber.
Duch's pre-trial hearing followed the arrest Monday of another regime figure, head of state Khieu Samphan who was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, bringing to five the number former top cadre facing justice for one of the 20th century's worst atrocities.
Up to two million people were executed or died of starvation and overwork as the communist regime emptied Cambodia's cities, exiling millions to vast collective farms in a bid to forge an agrarian utopia during its rule.
The Khmer Rouge also abolished money, religion and schools.
Duch's lawyers argued Tuesday that years spent imprisoned without trial by another court -- he was first arrested by the government in 1999 -- are grounds for his release.
"The detention of Duch for more than eight years gravely violates Cambodian and international human rights laws," said Cambodian lawyer Kar Savuth, who with Frenchman Francois Roux is defending the former jailer.
But prosecutors contend that Duch -- thought dead following the 1979 fall of the Khmer Rouge but re-discovered 20 years later working for a relief organisation -- could try to flee justice if freed.
The long-stalled genocide tribunal was established in July 2006 after nearly a decade of negotiations between Cambodia and the UN.
With trials not expected until the last half of 2008, Duch's hearing has been widely anticipated as a key test of the court's credibility.
It is also the first glimpse that most of the hundreds of Cambodians attending the hearing have had of one of those who brought them so much misery three decades ago.
"I want all of the people who were involved in the Khmer Rouge regime to be in jail," said villager Sao Sihun during Tuesday's proceedings, adding that 20 members of her family died under the regime.
As momentum towards trials builds, former foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife, the regime's social affairs minister Ieng Thirith, were arrested last week, while Khmer Rouge ideologue Nuon Chea was detained in September.
The regime's top leader Pol Pot died in 1998.
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