Khieu Samphan Charged With Atrocity Crimes, Detained

By VOA Khmer Stringers
Original reports from Phnom Penh
19 November 2007

Khieu Samphan, the former nominal head of the Khmer Rouge, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity late Monday, following his arrest in a Phnom Penh hospital earlier that day.

Police escorted the aging leader from Calmette Hospital, where he was recovering from a stroke in Pailin, and after a day of questioning, the Khmer Rouge tribunal formally charged him, for his role under the regime.

"Khieu Samphan's arrest today means that the court has fulfilled the first step," tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said. "His arrest today means that the co-judges have finished the first step in the investigation."

"This is a sign that Cambodia is going forward under the support of the UN, to stop impunity," he added.

Khieu Samphan, 76, is the fifth on a five-person list to face trial in the first round of a UN-backed, hybrid tribunal. Khieu Samphan's Cambodian lawyer, Say Bory, declined to comment after the arrest Monday.

The arrest was roundly congratulated, though some observers warned the tribunal, which has experienced infighting, accusations of mismanagement and an oft-delayed beginning, was not out of the woods.

"I see there will be problems in the future," said Hisham Mousar, a legal expert and tribunal monitor for the rights group Adhoc.

Following this first round, the tribunal could hit "deadlocks" as it attempts more indictments, he said. "The national and international co-prosecutors might not reach a consensus on [other] top former Khmer Rouge leaders becoming suspects," he said.

That would mean investigating judges would be working on just five cases of leaders: Khieu Samphan, 76, former foreign minister Ieng Sary, 78, social affairs minister Ieng Thirith, 75, chief ideologue Nuon Chea, 82, and torture center chief Kaing Khek Iev, 64, alias Duch.

US Embassy spokesman Jeff Daigle called the arrest "another positive step in the court proceedings."

"The arrest shows that the Khmer Rouge tribunal is increasing its speed in pushing the procedures to go faster, in taking top Khmer Rouge leaders to be responsible before history and their victims," said Thun Saray, director for the rights group Adhoc.

Human Rights Party Vice President Keo Remy appealed to the tribunal to "find justice" for leaders who "took no responsibility during their genocidal regime."

"Comrade Khieu Samphan says he knows nothing at all," Keo Remy said. "I say this is irresponsibility." Khieu Samphan's arrest "is ending the conflict…military, political and diplomatic," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has worked for a decade to document the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.

"We hope that in the future, we do not want to have such leaders," said Tuol Sleng prison survivor Van Nath, who also welcomed Khieu Samphan's arrest. The upcoming trials of all the leaders could warn people about the past, about "the ones who mistreated the people, not only me, but all the people of Cambodia."

"I hope in the future, justice will be done," he said.

Cambodia's Genocide Court Makes Fifth Khmer Rouge Arrest

By Heda Bayron
Voice of America
Hong Kong
19 November 2007

The ailing former Khmer Rouge president, Khieu Samphan, has been arrested for his role in Cambodia's mass killings in the 1970's. This is the latest move by an international genocide court to prosecute the leaders of one of the world's most brutal regimes. VOA's Heda Bayron reports from our Asia News Center in Hong Kong.

Police removed the 76-year-old Khieu Samphan from a Phnom Penh hospital where the ailing former president was being treated for a stroke.

International court spokesman Reach Sambath said Khieu Samphan was brought to court Monday morning.

"Mr. Khieu Samphan had been arrested with an arrest warrant by the co-investigating judges," Sambath said.

Khieu Samphan is the fifth member of the Khmer Rouge leadership to be placed in court custody. The court has yet to say what charges he faces. Other leaders such as former foreign minister Ieng Sary, arrested last week, have been charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Nearly two million Cambodians died through execution, starvation, disease and hard labor during the Khmer Rouge's rule from 1975 to 1979. The Khmer Rouge emptied cities and forced people to work in farms to create an agrarian utopia.

In a new book, Khieu Samphan denied that the Khmer Rouge's policies had been responsible for the mass killings. He said the Khmer Rouge "struggled to defend national sovereignty" and that coercion was used to make people work in the farms to prevent food shortages.

Other Khmer Rouge leaders have denied committing any crimes. On Tuesday, the court will start pre-trial proceedings against Duch, who ran a prison and torture center in Phnom Penh.

The U.N.-assisted tribunal opened last year after years of negotiations between the U.N. and the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge commander.

Human rights groups and Khmer Rouge survivors fear that the aging and ill Khmer Rouge leaders could die before a verdict is reached.

Last of top 5 Khmer Rouge leaders is arrested

Monday, November 19, 2007
By Seth Mydans
Posted by The International Herald Tribune (France)

"Government officials, military officers, the rich, indulge themselves with excessive spending ... Clearly, if the present situation continues, our country will unavoidably see its own dissolution" - Khieu Samphan discussing about the current Hun Sen's regime

PHNOM PENH: Khieu Samphan, the former head of state for Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, was arrested at a hospital here Monday. He is the last of five top leaders targeted by prosecutors in advance of trials expected to begin next year.

An urbane, French-educated leftist intellectual, Khieu Samphan, 76, had been living quietly in a former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, the group responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people from torture, executions, starvation and the exhaustion of forced labor from 1975 to 1979.

Khieu Samphan was brought to a hospital here last Wednesday after suffering an apparent stroke. Witnesses said he was supported on both sides by the officers who escorted him to a police car for arrest.

"An initial appearance will be held today during which he will be informed of the charges which have been brought against him," said a special international tribunal in a statement.

Khieu Samphan was to join three other members of the Khmer Rouge central committee, as well as the commandant of the Tuol Sleng torture house, in a detention facility at the tribunal's headquarters on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

The commandant, Kaing Guek Eav, 64, known as Duch, was due to appear at a pre-trial hearing Tuesday, the first appearance in open court of any Khmer Rouge figure for the crimes of the 1970s.

A close confidant of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader who died in 1998, since their student days in France, Khieu Samphan has denied responsibility for any massacres, saying he only learned of the atrocities committed by his regime when he saw a documentary about Tuol Sleng in 2003.

"It is normal that those who have lost their families, that they - what to say - feel some resentment," he said in 1998 after retiring from a decade-long stint as a guerrilla leader following the ouster of the Khmer Rouge regime.

But he added: " 'Let bygones be bygones' is the best solution for our country, because it is the only way to reach national reconciliation. It is the sine qua non condition for peace and stability in our country."

As his lawyer, Khieu Samphan has selected another associate from his student days, Jacques Vergès, a French lawyer who has made a name defending men accused of the most barbaric crimes. Vergès defended the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, the confessed serial killer Charles Sobhraj and the former Nazi Gestapo leader Klaus Barbie.

"He and I used to attend meetings of student committees against colonialism," Khieu Samphan told The Associated Press in an interview in 2004.

In France, Khieu Samphan wrote a doctoral thesis titled "Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development" that advocated national self-reliance. But it did not foreshadow the extreme and brutal methods of the Khmer Rouge, which drove all residents from the cities and transformed the nation into a massive labor camp.

Returning here from France in 1959, he became a university lecturer and leftist newspaper editor. He won a popular reputation for his incorruptibility and simple lifestyle. He fled into the jungle in 1967 to escape a crackdown on leftists and joined a small movement of Cambodian communists.

He remained in the top tier of the Khmer Rouge movement through its four-year rule in the late 1970s and through the civil war that continued until the time of his surrender to the government at the end of the 1990s. Phnom Penh took no action against him at the time.

In a book published last week, Khieu Samphan describes the Khmer Rouge regime as a popular uprising against repression and inequality and says its atrocities were carried out by brutal and uneducated lower-ranking cadre.

"There was no policy of starving people," he writes in the 157-page book, titled "Reflection on Cambodian History Up to the Era of Democratic Kampuchea," using the country's name under Khmer Rouge rule. "Nor was there any direction set out for carrying out mass killings. There was always close consideration of the people's well-being."

But he writes that "coercion was needed" in order to make the population work hard in the face of food shortages.

He describes Pol Pot as a leader who "sacrificed his entire life" to defend national sovereignty. But he also says it was Pol Pot who was responsible for the purges within the movement that took many thousands of lives.

In addition to Pol Pot, a number of his colleagues at the top tier of the Khmer Rouge have died before they could be brought to trial.

Those in detention now include Nuon Chea, 82, the movement's chief ideologist, who surrendered together with Khieu Samphan in 1998 and had lived next door since then in the remote town of Pailin, where most of their neighbors were former members of the Khmer Rouge. He was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

They also include the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, Ieng Sary, 82, and his wife and fellow central committee member, Ieng Thirith, 75, who were arrested on Nov. 13. Both were charged with crimes against humanity, and Ieng Sary was also charged with war crimes.

In a statement released by the court, Ieng Sary called the charges against him "unacceptable" but said he was "very happy that this court has been established because it will be an opportunity for me to discover the truth."

Like Khieu Samphan, he claimed ignorance of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge.

"I would like to know the truth about a dark period in our history," the court quoted him as saying. "I do not know where the truth lies."

In his book, Khieu Samphan portrays the Khmer Rouge regime as just another chapter in the ups and downs of Cambodian history, and far from the worst of them.

It supplanted a period of misrule, injustice, corruption and social ills under a regime supported by the United States following a coup in 1970, he writes.

"Now such a regime is gradually re-emerging in Cambodia," he writes, citing corruption, decadence, land grabbing and illegal logging.

"Government officials, military officers, the rich, indulge themselves with excessive spending," he writes. "Clearly, if the present situation continues, our country will unavoidably see its own dissolution."

This is the view of history he offered when he surrendered in 1998, saying at a news conference, "The developments of history in our country are very complicated."

"To say who is wrong and who is right and who is doing this and who is doing that, et cetera," he said, and his voice trailed off.

Khmer Rouge president arrested from sick bed

19/11/2007
By Thomas Bell
South East Asia Correspondent
The Telegraph (UK)

The former president of the Khmer Rouge regime has been taken from his hospital bed by armed men and arrested to face charges of crimes against humanity.

Khieu Samphan, 76, suffered a stroke last week according to some reports, but witnesses say he was able to walk to the waiting vehicles before being driven away.

He is the fifth, and possibly final, figure from the ultra-Maoist regime blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians in the late 1970s to be arrested.

The court earlier announced that it would concentrate on five suspects but did not rule out further prosecutions later.

In a book published last week, Khieu Samphan defended the Khmer Rouge record.

"There was no policy of starving people. Nor was there any direction set out for carrying out mass killings," he wrote. "There was always close consideration of the people's well-being."

He also defended the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, who died without facing trial in 1998, as a patriot who "sacrificed his entire life... to defend national sovereignty."

He has hired as defence lawyer an old friend from his student days in Paris in the 1950s, the famous lawyer Jacques Verges whose clients include the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, Carlos the Jackal and Slobodan Milosovic.

Experts say that as titular head of state Khieu Samphan was not much involved in the daily running of the regime and the case against him is weaker than for the other defendants. It rests on the allegation that he was aware of the genocide and did nothing to stop it.

'Devil's advocate' Jacques Verges arrives in Cambodia

Jacques Vergès, aka The Devil's Advocate, in Paris (Photo: The New York Times)

Mon, 19 Nov 2007
DPA

Phnom Penh - Controversial lawyer Jacques Verges, nicknamed 'The Devil's Advocate' for his defence of some of the world's most notorious men, arrived in Cambodia Monday to prepare to defend his friend, former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan. During his long career, Thai-born octogenarian Verges has listed clients including Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in 1987 and Venezuelan terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, and has long said he would defend Samphan if needed.

Said to have been a personal friend of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998, Verges is also a supporter of French-educated Samphan, who was arrested Monday by the joint Cambodia-UN tribunal on Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Verges arrived Monday morning and was met by other members of Samphan's legal team at Phnom Penh International Airport. He made no comment to waiting journalists.

Verges wrote the preface to Samphan's 2004 book "Cambodia's Recent History - And the Reasons Behind the Decisions I Made," in which Samphan espoused his famously anti-colonialist views and claims that despite being head of state, he is innocent because he did not belong to the higher echelons of the movement.

Charges against Samphan, 76, were expected to be announced later Monday. He has always denied any wrongdoing during the 1975 to 1979 regime during which up to 2 million Cambodians died.

Khieu Samphan was head of state of murderous Khmer Rouge

By KER MUNTHIT
Associated Press Writer

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Khieu Samphan, arrested Monday by Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, was an intellectual who served as the head of state of the murderous Khmer Rouge movement in the late 1970s.

He became the fifth suspect detained by the tribunal.

The tribunal is seeking accountability for atrocities during the Khmer Rouge regime's 1975-79 rule that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

Khieu Samphan has repeatedly denied responsibility for any atrocities. In a book published last week, he defended many of the policies of the ultra-communists although he has admitted that some killings took place.

Born July 27, 1931, the son of a provincial judge, Khieu Samphan won a government scholarship to study in Paris in the early 1950s. There he joined a Marxist circle of Cambodian students who formed the nucleus of what later became the Khmer Rouge.

After returning from Paris in the late 1950s he helped create the left-leaning French-language newspaper, l'Observateur. He also established his reputation as an honest intellectual and attracted a following among students at home.

His activities and popularity, however, alienated then-head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk, whose police stripped and beat him on the streets of the capital in July 1960 before detaining him for a month in August.

Khieu Samphan fled into the jungle to join Cambodian communists in 1967 to escape the government's stepped-up crackdown on the leftists.

In his 2004 memoir, he claimed that he was merely a "shell" for the Khmer Rouge, despite his title as the head of state he received a year after the group took power on April 17, 1975.

He said he had nothing to do with its radical policies to evict people from cities, abolish money and replace private ownership with communal cooperatives across the country.

The secretive Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown from power in January 1979 by a Vietnamese invasion.

Khieu Samphan re-emerged as its chief representative while the guerrillas conducted diplomatic and military campaigns to oust the Vietnamese occupation army and its satellite regime led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who is currently Cambodia's prime minister.

In late 1991, Khieu Samphan returned to the Cambodian capital as the chief Khmer Rouge representative under the Paris peace accord. He was met by a government-organized mob that almost lynched him. He and his entourage were rescued in an armored personnel carrier that drove them to the airport from where a plane flew them to Thailand, Cambodia's neighbor the Khmer Rouge used as an exit door to the outside world for nearly two decades.

The Khmer Rouge boycotted the 1993 U.N.-supervised election and resumed fighting a small scale guerrilla war.

Khieu Samphan retained his high profile through the group's clandestine radio broadcasts until the movement collapsed in 1999.

Until his arrest, he had lived in Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwest Cambodia, and spent some of his time tending ducks in his backyard.

He claimed he was awaken to the reality of his regime's brutality only after watching a 2003 documentary about the Khmer Rouge S-21 prison, where as many as 16,000 people are believed to have passed through its gates before being taken for execution. Only about a dozen are thought to have survived.

"When I saw the film, it was hard for me to deny (the killings). There's no more doubt left," Khieu Samphan said in an interview with The Associated Press at the time.

"Everything has to go the trial's way now, and there's no other way," he said. "But I also want the public to understand about me, too. I was not involved in any killings," he said at the time.

ECCC arrests former DK leader Khieu Samphan

November 19, 2007

Khieu Samphan, head of state of the former Democratic Kampuchea (DK), was arrested Monday by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a court spokesman said.

Khieu Samphan has been arrested and brought to the tribunal, spokesman Reach Sambath told reporters, without elaborating on the charges.

ECCC detained and charged former DK deputy prime minister and foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife, who served as DK's education and social affairs minister, last Monday.

ECCC was co-installed by the United Nations and the Cambodian government last year to try former DK leaders, whose regime from 1975 to 1979 was widely held responsible for the death of some 1.7million people over starvation, torture and lack of medicine.

Source: Xinhua

Photos from Khieu Samphan's arrest

Security forces personnel gather outside a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Nov. 19, 2007, during the arrest of former Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan. The U.N.-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia arrested the former Khmer Rouge head of state Monday following his release from the hospital in the capital, officials said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Cambodian security forces personnel gather outside a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Nov. 19, 2007, during the arrest of former Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan. The U.N.-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia arrested the former Khmer Rouge head of state Monday following his release from a hospital in the capital, officials said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

So Socheat, left, wife of arrested former Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan, leaves the hospital Monday, Nov. 19, 2007 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The U.N.-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia arrested the former Khmer Rouge head of state Monday following his release from a hospital in the capital, officials said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

A military convoy takes the former Khmer Rouge president and Pol Pot confidant Khieu Samphan from Calmet hospital to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh November 19, 2007. Rifle-toting police arrested Samphan on Monday, the latest member of Pol Pot's inner circle to be detained by the U.N.-backed "killing Fields" tribunal. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

A general view shows the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh November 19, 2007. Chief Khmer Rouge inquisitor Duch, who ran the S-21 interrogation and torture centre at the former Tuol Sleng high school, will make his first public appearance at the "Killing Fields" Tribunal for a formal bail hearing on November 20. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

Cambodia police arrest Khmer Rouge president

File photo shows Kieu Samphan, as prime minister of the "Democtratic Kampuchea" and Army Chief of staff, congratulating his troups in April 1976. Samphan was arrested Monday by Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal, a court spokesman said without elaborating on the charges.(AFP/File)

Mon Nov 19, 2007
By Ek Madra

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Rifle-toting Cambodian police arrested ex-Khmer Rouge President Khieu Samphan on Monday, the latest member of Pol Pot's inner circle to be detained by the U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal.

The French-educated guerrilla leader was taken from a hospital in the capital Phnom Penh where he was treated after suffering a fall last week at his home in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin on the Thai border.

"My client is being transferred to the tribunal today where he will appear before the co-investigating judges," Say Bory, Khieu Samphan's lawyer, told Reuters.

A court spokesman declined to comment, but a Cambodian judge on the tribunal also confirmed the transfer.

A close confidante of Pol Pot, the 78-year-old Khieu Samphan has denied knowledge of any atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge during its four-year reign of terror from 1975-79.

An estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died of torture, disease or starvation under the ultra-Maoist revolution. His 24-year-old daughter said she was not allowed to see her father before his arrest.

"I don't know why they won't let my father go back home," Khieu Maly told Reuters.

Khieu Samphan is the fifth person to face the long-awaited Khmer Rouge tribunal, which started work in earnest a few months ago after nearly a decade of delays caused by wrangling over jurisdiction and cash.

Former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife -- both life-long friends of "Brother Number One" Pol Pot -- were arrested and charged last week with crimes against humanity.

"Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, who had also lived in Pailin, is in the custody of the court on similar charges, as is the Beijing-backed regime's chief jailer, Duch, who ran Phnom Penh's "S-21" torture and interrogation centre.

Duch will be the first to make a public appearance at the tribunal when he appears for a bail hearing on Tuesday.

Khieu Samphan was the leading intellectual among the small group of Cambodian students in 1950s Paris who became imbued with communism and returned home to the southeast Asian nation to form the core of the guerrilla movement that became the Khmer Rouge.

However, he published a book three years ago portraying himself as a virtual prisoner of the regime and denying knowledge of any atrocities as Pol Pot drove his dream of creating an agrarian peasant utopia.

Pol Pot died in 1998 in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng.

Ex-Khmer Rouge Head of State Arrested

File photo shows Khieu Samphan, then prime minister of the "Democtratic Kampuchea" arriving in Beijing, 19 August 1975, for a state visit in China. Samphan was arrested Monday by Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal, a court spokesman said without elaborating on the charges.(AFP/File)

By SOPHENG CHEANG

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The U.N.-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia arrested the former Khmer Rouge head of state Monday following his release from a hospital in the capital, officials said.

Khieu Samphan's arrest makes him the fifth senior Khmer Rouge official to be detained ahead of the long-delayed tribunal that is expected to begin next year.

The arrests come almost three decades after the group fell from power, with many fearing the aging suspects might die before they ever see a courtroom.

Police escorted Khieu Samphan from the hospital Monday, holding his arms for support, and led him to a police car that sped away in a convoy of about a half dozen police vehicles before tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath confirmed the arrest.

Khieu Samphan had been admitted to the hospital last Wednesday after suffering a stroke.

His arrest by the U.N.-backed tribunal had been widely expected. The tribunal already has arrested four of his colleagues to face trial for atrocities during the regime's 1975-79 rule that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.

Khieu Samphan has repeatedly denied responsibility for any atrocities. In a book published last week, he defended many of the policies of the ultra-communists although he has admitted that some killings took place.

He claimed he was awaken to the reality of his regime's brutality only after watching a 2003 documentary about the Khmer Rouge S-21 prison, where as many as 16,000 people are believed to have passed through its gates before being taken for execution. Only about a dozen are thought to have survived.

"When I saw the film, it was hard for me to deny (the killings). There's no more doubt left," Khieu Samphan said in an AP interview then.

"Everything has to go the trial's way now, and there's no other way," he said. "But I also want the public to understand about me, too. I was not involved in any killings."

The U.N.-assisted tribunal was created last year after seven years of contentious negotiations between the United Nations and Cambodia.

A week ago, authorities arrested Ieng Sary, the Khmer Rouge's ex-foreign minister, and his wife Ieng Thirith, its social affairs minister. Both were charged with crimes against humanity; Ieng Sary also was charged with war crimes.

Two other suspects — former Khmer Rouge ideologist Nuon Chea and Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who headed the group's S-21 torture center — were detained earlier this year on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Associated Press Writer Ker Munthit contributed to this report.

Khieu Samphan arrested

Monday November 19, 2007

Police take former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan out of hospital

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Police took Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head of state, out of the Phnom Penh hospital where he was being treated for a stroke and drove him away in a heavily guarded convoy Monday.

It was not immediately clear where he was being taken. Two officers helped Khieu Samphan, holding his arms as they led him to a police car, which sped away in a convoy of a half dozen police vehicles.

Khieu Samphan's arrest by a U.N.-backed genocide tribunal has been widely expected.

The tribunal has already arrested four of his colleagues to face trial for atrocities during the regime's 1975-79 rule that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.

He was hospitalized last Wednesday after suffering a stroke.

Ex-Khmer Rouge Head of State Arrested

November 18. 2007
The Associated Press

Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head of state, was arrested Monday by a U.N.-backed genocide tribunal after being taken from a hospital where he was being treated following a stroke, officials said.

Police escorted Khieu Samphan from a Phnom Penh hospital, where he had been admitted Wednesday. They held his arms for support and led him to a police car, which sped away in a convoy of a half dozen police vehicles.

"Khieu Samphan, the former head of state of Democratic Kampuchea was arrested," said tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath, referring to the official name of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Khieu Samphan's arrest by a U.N.-backed genocide tribunal has been widely expected. The tribunal already has arrested four of his colleagues to face trial for atrocities during the regime's 1975-79 rule that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.

Cambodia police arrest Khieu Samphan

Mon Nov 19, 2007

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Rifle-toting Cambodian police arrested ex-Khmer Rouge President Khieu Samphan on Monday, the fifth member of Pol Pot's inner circle to be detained by the U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal.

The French-educated guerrilla leader was taken from a hospital in the capital Phnom Penh where he was treated after suffering a fall last week at his home in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin on the Thai border.

"Khieu Samphan is being transferred to the tribunal," a police official said.

A close confidante of Pol Pot, Khieu Samphan has denied any knowledge of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge during its four-year reign of terror from 1975-79.

An estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died of torture, disease or starvation under the ultra-Maoist revolution.

(Reporting by Ek Madra; writing by Darren Schuettler; editing by Rosalind Russell)