Ker Munthit
AP
CAMBODIANS Ieng Sary and his wife, who were taken into custody yesterday by genocide tribunal officials, were part of the Khmer Rouge’s inner circle, rising to power alongside its notorious leader, Pol Pot.
But in the 1990s, when the Khmer Rouge were guerrillas in the countryside, the couple defected with a large coterie of followers, in effect setting the stage for the group’s collapse by the end of the decade.
Their change of heart earned them a limited amnesty but left open how much responsibility they bore for the atrocities the Khmer Rouge regime committed in the late 1970s, when 1,7-million Cambodians were executed or died of starvation, disease or exhaustion.
As deputy prime minister and foreign minister of the regime, Ieng Sary was one of a few key decision makers in the group’s policy-making central committee. Ieng Thirith, Pol Pot’s sister-in-law, served as social affairs minister.
Ieng Sary has long been accused of personally persuading several diplomats and intellectuals based overseas to return to Cambodia to join the revolution after the Khmer Rouge overthrew a pro-US government in 1975. The returnees were arrested and put in re-education camps, and most were later executed.
Ieng Thirith’s participation included the “planning, direction, co-ordination and ordering of widespread purges … and the unlawful killing or murder of staff members from within the ministry of social affairs”, according to prosecution documents.
Born as Kim Trang on January 1 1930 — the date is sometimes disputed — Ieng Sary received a government scholarship in the 1950s to study in France. There he married Ieng Thirith, a fellow student who went on to become one of Cambodia’s first prominent female academics.
In Europe the couple were active in Marxist politics and when they returned home in 1957 became involved in clandestine communist activities. The two fled into the jungle in 1965 to join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge.
While Pol Pot was known as Brother No1, and Nuon Chea, the movement’s chief ideologist — arrested in September — was Brother No2, Ieng Sary was Brother No3.
Yet Ieng Sary has long denied any responsibility for the Khmer Rouge atrocities. He said shortly after defecting to the government in 1996 that Pol Pot “was the sole and supreme architect of the party’s line, strategy and tactics.… Nuon Chea implemented all Pol Pot’s decisions to torture and execute those who expressed opposite opinions and those they hated, like intellectuals.”
“I have no regrets because this was not my responsibility,” he said.
Cambodian newspapers recently questioned the state of Ieng Thirith’s mental health, reporting that she showed signs of dementia.
Scholars and genocide researchers tell a different story about Ieng Sary.
Known by his revolutionary alias, Comrade Van, Ieng Sary received many internal Khmer Rouge documents detailing torture and mass execution of suspected internal enemies, according to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, an independent group gathering evidence of the regime’s crimes but not connected to the tribunal.
“We have cleaned up the internal traitors and extracted confessions from them. We are gradually continuing to wipe out the remaining enemies, who are opposed to our revolution overtly or covertly,” read a cable addressed to Comrade Van in 1978, apparent evidence that he had full knowledge of the purges.
In August 1979, eight months after a Vietnam-led resistance movement overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime, Ieng Sary was sentenced to death in absentia.
The Hanoi-installed government’s court, made up of early Khmer Rouge defectors such as current Prime Minister Hun Sen , held the proceedings like a Soviet show trial — more for propaganda than for justice.
The Khmer Rouge continued fighting a guerrilla war from the jungle even after signing a peace agreement in 199 1.
Confined to a dwindling number of strongholds, mostly in border areas, and increasingly reduced to acts of banditry, Ieng Sary became the first member of the inner circle to defect.
In August 1996 he seized control of thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas and the diamond -rich area they controlled along the Thai border. A month later Ieng Sary was granted amnesty by Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihanouk at Hun’s request.
The amnesty lifted the death sentence on him and granted him immunity from prosecution under a 1994 law outlawing the Khmer Rouge.
Ieng Sary’s amnesty was one of many contentious issues that dragged out the negotiations between the Cambodian government and the United Nations (UN) to establish the genocide tribunal.
The government was reluctant to make a clear commitment to revoke Ieng Sary’s amnesty for fear it could trigger dissent among former Khmer Rouge followers, jeopardising peace and stability.
But in June 2003, it agreed with the UN on the tribunal pact, which includes a clause saying the government “shall not request an amnesty or pardon for any persons who may be investigated for or convicted of crimes referred to in the present agreement”.
But in the 1990s, when the Khmer Rouge were guerrillas in the countryside, the couple defected with a large coterie of followers, in effect setting the stage for the group’s collapse by the end of the decade.
Their change of heart earned them a limited amnesty but left open how much responsibility they bore for the atrocities the Khmer Rouge regime committed in the late 1970s, when 1,7-million Cambodians were executed or died of starvation, disease or exhaustion.
As deputy prime minister and foreign minister of the regime, Ieng Sary was one of a few key decision makers in the group’s policy-making central committee. Ieng Thirith, Pol Pot’s sister-in-law, served as social affairs minister.
Ieng Sary has long been accused of personally persuading several diplomats and intellectuals based overseas to return to Cambodia to join the revolution after the Khmer Rouge overthrew a pro-US government in 1975. The returnees were arrested and put in re-education camps, and most were later executed.
Ieng Thirith’s participation included the “planning, direction, co-ordination and ordering of widespread purges … and the unlawful killing or murder of staff members from within the ministry of social affairs”, according to prosecution documents.
Born as Kim Trang on January 1 1930 — the date is sometimes disputed — Ieng Sary received a government scholarship in the 1950s to study in France. There he married Ieng Thirith, a fellow student who went on to become one of Cambodia’s first prominent female academics.
In Europe the couple were active in Marxist politics and when they returned home in 1957 became involved in clandestine communist activities. The two fled into the jungle in 1965 to join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge.
While Pol Pot was known as Brother No1, and Nuon Chea, the movement’s chief ideologist — arrested in September — was Brother No2, Ieng Sary was Brother No3.
Yet Ieng Sary has long denied any responsibility for the Khmer Rouge atrocities. He said shortly after defecting to the government in 1996 that Pol Pot “was the sole and supreme architect of the party’s line, strategy and tactics.… Nuon Chea implemented all Pol Pot’s decisions to torture and execute those who expressed opposite opinions and those they hated, like intellectuals.”
“I have no regrets because this was not my responsibility,” he said.
Cambodian newspapers recently questioned the state of Ieng Thirith’s mental health, reporting that she showed signs of dementia.
Scholars and genocide researchers tell a different story about Ieng Sary.
Known by his revolutionary alias, Comrade Van, Ieng Sary received many internal Khmer Rouge documents detailing torture and mass execution of suspected internal enemies, according to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, an independent group gathering evidence of the regime’s crimes but not connected to the tribunal.
“We have cleaned up the internal traitors and extracted confessions from them. We are gradually continuing to wipe out the remaining enemies, who are opposed to our revolution overtly or covertly,” read a cable addressed to Comrade Van in 1978, apparent evidence that he had full knowledge of the purges.
In August 1979, eight months after a Vietnam-led resistance movement overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime, Ieng Sary was sentenced to death in absentia.
The Hanoi-installed government’s court, made up of early Khmer Rouge defectors such as current Prime Minister Hun Sen , held the proceedings like a Soviet show trial — more for propaganda than for justice.
The Khmer Rouge continued fighting a guerrilla war from the jungle even after signing a peace agreement in 199 1.
Confined to a dwindling number of strongholds, mostly in border areas, and increasingly reduced to acts of banditry, Ieng Sary became the first member of the inner circle to defect.
In August 1996 he seized control of thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas and the diamond -rich area they controlled along the Thai border. A month later Ieng Sary was granted amnesty by Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihanouk at Hun’s request.
The amnesty lifted the death sentence on him and granted him immunity from prosecution under a 1994 law outlawing the Khmer Rouge.
Ieng Sary’s amnesty was one of many contentious issues that dragged out the negotiations between the Cambodian government and the United Nations (UN) to establish the genocide tribunal.
The government was reluctant to make a clear commitment to revoke Ieng Sary’s amnesty for fear it could trigger dissent among former Khmer Rouge followers, jeopardising peace and stability.
But in June 2003, it agreed with the UN on the tribunal pact, which includes a clause saying the government “shall not request an amnesty or pardon for any persons who may be investigated for or convicted of crimes referred to in the present agreement”.
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