Justice more than a verdict

Khmer Rouge soldiers prepare to leave their zone in Battambang province in 1999. (Nic Dunlop/Panos pictures)

Journalist and author Elizabeth Becker speaks to the Post yesterday in Phnom Penh. (Derek Stout)

The above photograph, by Elizabeth Becker, will be on display at the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre. (Elizabeth Becker)

Former S-21 prison director Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, speaks to Nic Dunlop in Battambang province in1999. (Nic Dunlop/Panos pictures)

Wednesday, 08 February 2012
Bridget Di Certo with additional reporting by Deborah Seccombe
The Phnom Penh Post

The landmark closure of the Khmer Rouge tribunal’s first case has drawn worldwide cheer and criticism, but for two journalists whose careers have been impacted by the crimes of S-21 jailer Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, justice and the healing of a nation takes many forms.

Irish journalist Nic Dun­­­lop was only 30 when he was scrambling through the jungles of a Cambodia still deeply scarred by decades of conflict in 1999.

“It was an accidental encounter,” Dunlop told the Post of his discovery of the notorious chief of the Khmer Rouge’s brutal interrogation fa­cil­­­ity.

“Yes, I was carrying his photo and asked of his whereabouts etc, but I never really expected to come face to face with him.”

Nic Dunlop: ‘We must understand the [Burmese] junta’

Nic Dunlop (Photo: Reuters)

25 January 2011
By FRANCIS WADE
Democratic Voice of Burma

British-born photojournalist Nic Dunlop first came to attention in the late 1990s as the man who tracked down Khmer Rouge leader and head of the infamous S-21 torture centre, Comrade Duch, in rural Cambodia. Dunlop’s discovery of Duch eventually led to his conviction on charges of crimes against humanity, becoming the first of Pol Pot’s henchmen to be sentenced. Later, Dunlop turned his attention to Burma, and has spent more than a decade documenting the regime and its atrocities. The recent film, Burma Soldier, co-directed by Dunlop, Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, and co-produced by LeBrocquy Fraser Ltd and Break-Thru, tells the story of Myo Myint, a former Burmese army soldier turned pro-democracy activist.

Tell us about how the idea for the film came about

Many years ago I started working on Burma and it was over a period of 10 years taking photographs for what I hoped would be a graphic book about the dictatorship that it occurred to me that we know so little about the military. It was very difficult to get photos of them inside Burma, which only increased my interest. Everyone talks about what’s wrong with Burma, but very few people reflect on what it is that created the Burmese military – it’s as if they arrived from outer space. And if you could peel back the layer of a brutal dictatorship then you’d have an oriental idyll of a Buddhist paradise where people just wanted to go about their lives. It’s that kind of picture-perfect image of Southeast Asia that so many Westerners have. And nobody seemed to be very interested in what created this army of occupation, so during my many travels and interviews with refugees, dissidents, and people inside the country I’d always ask this question and people often didn’t have anything close to an answer.

Documentary Shows Rare Look at Dissent in Myanmar Military

January 21, 2011
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times

BANGKOK — It is the most vilified army in Southeast Asia, known for crushing pro-democracy demonstrations in Myanmar and for its brutal suppression of ethnic groups seeking self-rule in the region’s longest-running civil war.

The 400,000-strong army in the former Burma is remarkable for its cohesion, cemented by a system of rewards and punishments, and military analysts have found little sign of dissent in its ranks.

But in its lower levels, at least, it is made up of men who come from a society that widely fears and distrusts the military and who join for the steady employment and status it offers, according to Myo Myint, 48, a former soldier who joined the democratic opposition led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mr. Myo Myint is the central figure in a new documentary called “Burma Soldier,” a film that traces his life from the battlefield, where he lost a leg and an arm, to his 15 years in prison after joining the opposition and then his departure through a Thai refugee camp to the United States in 2008.

“While the top ranks control and repress people, most soldiers are like me. They join the military because they need to earn money for their daily survival,” he said in a telephone interview from Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he lives now.

In addition, he said, “There are so many soldiers serving in the military who secretly support the opposition but cannot expose their feelings. They will be sent to prison and a very heavy imprisonment.”

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: A Photographer

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Irish photographer recalls day he found KRouge torturer

Nic Dunlop (Photo: Reuters)

Sat, Jul 24, 2010
AFP

BANGKOK, THAILAND - In March 1999 an old man wandered up to an Irish photographer on his day off in a village in Cambodia. It was Duch, the torture chief of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime who many assumed was long dead.

On Monday the former prison chief, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, will hear the verdict in his trial at a UN-backed court in Phnom Penh on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and premeditated murder.

The story behind the remarkable encounter began in 1989 when Nic Dunlop left Ireland aged 19 for Cambodia, where Khmer Rouge rebels were still waging an insurgency a decade after being routed by invading Vietnamese forces.

"Cambodia was the first place where I realised the world wasn't quite right. What has occurred under the Khmer Rouge was so far beyond my understanding... that ignoring it became impossible," said Dunlop.

He visited Tuol Sleng, or S-21, the Phnom Penh prison that has been transformed into a genocide museum, and saw the walls covered with photographs of the victims' faces. Duch's picture was also there.

"If there was one person that could provide something close to an explanation as to what happened, it would be him," Dunlop said in an interview with AFP in Bangkok, where he now lives.

By the late 1990s, Dunlop was on a quest to find the maths teacher turned revolutionary, who is accused of overseeing the execution of some 15,000 prisoners at S-21. Dunlop even carried a photograph of him in his wallet.

He began to ask Khmer Rouge defectors if they recognised Duch, but with no success.

"I was trying to work out whether they were trying to hide something or telling me the truth because he was a terrifying figure by any standard," Dunlop said.

Then one day, during a walk in a village in western Cambodia, he came face to face with Duch, who was working for a Christian aid agency under a false name.

"It was Duch. Immediately I knew it was him," Dunlop recalled. "He was very disarming and friendly. We talked a lot. I tried to ask him questions that would not arouse his suspicion."

For a journalist it was the scoop of a lifetime. Dunlop, worried about what might happen to Duch if his whereabouts became widely known, notified the United Nations in Phnom Penh of his discovery.

He returned to see the former jailer several times in an attempt to learn more about him. Then Dunlop decided to give Duch the chance to defend himself for a magazine article he was writing.

Three times in one day he denied being the chief of Tuol Sleng, before suddenly confessing.

"Suddenly he was talking about running S-21, responsibilities, his remorse, the fact that he felt he'd been betrayed by the communist party because he wanted to be a good communist and not an executioner."

Duch was arrested a few weeks later and has spent more than a decade in prison.

Dunlop has requested interviews with him for his biography, "The Lost Executioner", but Duch indicated he would only talk after the end of the trial.

Initially called to testify at the tribunal, the photographer was later dropped from the list of witnesses, without explanation.

To those who say Monday's verdict might never have come about without him, Dunlop smiles.

"It was just a matter of time before somebody else would discover him. What's strange for me in the end is that he should walk up to me and I should recognise him immediately."

Duch is the first Khmer Rouge cadre to be prosecuted in an international court.

He is also the first to have confessed - although he also asked to be acquitted and released - and the tribunal is relying on his testimony in the planned trial of four regime leaders.

"Whatever you make of his confession, contrition, lack of contrition or arrogance, the fact that we had somebody talking about that period of history is very significant," said Dunlop.

Prosecutors have demanded Duch be sentenced to 40 years in prison - in effect a life sentence for the 67-year-old.

Dunlop does not plan to be in court for the verdict.

"It's not my story. It's the Cambodians' story," he said.

Khmer Rouge court's identity crisis

May 23, 2009
By Stephen Kurczy
Asia Times (Hong Kong)

PHNOM PENH - Slung over Nic Dunlop's shoulder on Tuesday was the same vintage Leica he used a decade ago to photograph the Khmer Rouge's former chief of secret police and publicize his whereabouts.

Dunlop was standing outside the Khmer Rouge tribunal where Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, is on trial for overseeing the notorious S-21 prison during the regime's rule in the late 1970s.

During the court's recess, Dunlop recalled his surprising discovery of Duch after a year spent showing Cambodians the solitary black-and-white photograph of him that he carried in his wallet. In 1999, the photojournalist found Duch, living under a pseudonym and working for a refugee committee near the Thai border.

"Duch picked [my camera] up and said, 'Oh, very nice, you like expensive cameras,'" Dunlop said, his Leica still slung from his shoulder. While Dunlop said he stumbled upon Duch by chance, and others say his photographer's eye helped him spot Duch, the accused has said it was God's work.

A Christian convert, Duch told the court on April 22 that Jesus Christ guided Dunlop to Samlot town. "I told Nic Dunlop, 'Christ brought you to meet me'." The remarks echoed Dunlop's account in his book The Lost Executioner, where he quotes Duch saying: "It is God's will that you are here. Now my future is in God's hands."

Soon after their meeting, Cambodian security forces arrested Duch and he has been jailed since, but Dunlop has attempted to maintain contact. He tried to send him the books On God by Norman Mailer and The Inner Life by the theologian Thomas a Kempis, along with letters and e-mails through third parties. All efforts failed and Duch never responded.

"I'm told that he's angry with me still," said Dunlop.

Dunlop remains a central figure in the quest to understand and reconcile what happened under the Khmer Rouge. He is expected to testify at Duch's trial. Along with answering questions, Dunlop is still asking them as he shifts the focus of his Leica from Duch to the legacy of the court.

A movie house in Phnom Penh on Tuesday screened a documentary Dunlop produced for al-Jazeera's People & Power television series in February. The film highlights what Dunlop considers the court's lackluster outreach efforts and its subsequent failure to become relevant to ordinary Cambodians. In it, he visits M-99, a former prison in Kompong Speu province. Duch allegedly sent prisoners to M-99 while chief of the Khmer Rouge secret police and warden of S-21, where he is thought to have overseen the torture and death of possibly 20,000 men, women and children.

In the film, Dunlop finds an old woman living near M-99 who spent three years imprisoned there, waking every morning to bury prisoners who had died in the night. She said she has never heard of the Khmer Rouge tribunal or Duch.

"Her house is less than three hours from [the courthouse] and not one official from the court had gone to investigate" the site or inform the villagers of the tribunal, Dunlop said.

The documentary was shown on the eve of Cambodia's Day of Anger, held each year on May 20 to commemorate the day in 1976 when the Khmer Rouge announced its plan to turn Cambodia into an agrarian collectivization, a decision that contributed to the deaths of some 2 million citizens from overwork and starvation.

This year's Day of Anger also coincided with distribution of the first Khmer Rouge textbook. US Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Clint Williamson and Education Ministry Secretary of State Chemteav Tum Sa Im presided over Wednesday's official presentation of 175,000 copies of A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) to 1,321 high schools and junior high schools in all the kingdom's 24 provinces.

Despite the new textbook and three decades of Days of Anger, lack of awareness of the long-awaited Khmer Rouge tribunal remains widespread. The documentary cited a University of California study in 2008 that found 85% of Cambodians had little or no knowledge of the court. Traveling around Cambodia, Dunlop said he has found resounding support for the idea of a tribunal, but little knowledge of it. He blames international donors for failing to adequately fund outreach projects.

"I think a large burden of the responsibility to explain this process to ordinary Cambodians lies with the donors," Dunlop said Tuesday. "Only $50,000 [of the trial's $143 million budget] has been allocated to this. It doesn't add up. It should be paramount."

Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said by telephone that the court has heard this criticism before and is taking it into consideration, but he added that court proceedings are broadcast daily on state television to keep Cambodians informed without public affairs staff needing to visit every Cambodians' home.

"Sometimes you don't need to go from house to house, because TV goes there already," he said.

German Ambassador Frank Mann, who attended Tuesday's screening, declined to comment on Dunlop's criticisms. He did note that Germany had provided $11 million to the tribunal process, with one-third allocated to tribunal outreach conducted by various non-profit organizations, such as the Center for Social Development (CSD).

It was the CSD that was responsible for the shuttling in by bus of most of the Cambodians attending the court on Tuesday. The busload of villagers from Prey Veng province said they could not have otherwise afforded the overnight trip to Phnom Penh.

One of the villagers, Sy Siem, 66, said 12 of his family members died under the Khmer Rouge. He said he gets his news from the radio, but he found it difficult to hear the court proceedings daily.

"Not many people have the chance to visit the court and they are only familiar with the name of the tribunal, but ask where it is located and they don't know," said Nou Lon, 61. Asked to name the five suspects in detention, Nou Lon could only name three and then added that everyone knew Pol Pot - the Khmer Rouge's "Brother Number 1" who died in 1998 - was the guilty man anyway.

"When I return home I will tell people about what I saw and experienced and I will encourage people to attend the hearing," Nou Lon said. "For those who really suffered, I believe they can save money and attend the court one time."

Sy Siem and Nou Lon both walked out of the court Tuesday with free t-shirts, free transportation, and a free night's lodging at a Phnom Penh hotel courtesy of CSD. Both said they believed the tribunal is leaving a positive legacy, though Dunlop still questions the effectiveness of a court that the majority of Cambodians will never attend. Lack of awareness in the countryside, along with unresolved allegations of political interference and corruption in the court, all threaten to turn the proceedings into a sideshow.

"I'm still undecided if this is worth something or worth nothing," Dunlop said after Tuesday night's film screening. "So much is said to be done for the people of Cambodia and so little actually is. Very little actually trickles down."

KRouge prison chief says Jesus led to his arrest [... Halleluiah!]

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — The former Khmer Rouge prison chief told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court he believed Jesus Christ had guided journalists to track him down a decade ago when he was a fugitive.

Duch, a born-again Christian, apologised last month at the start of his trial, accepting blame for overseeing the extermination of 15,000 people who passed through the regime's Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21.

As he sat in the dock Tuesday wearing a white polo shirt, he recounted how journalists Nic Dunlop and Nate Thayer interviewed him at a hotel in a western Cambodian town in 1999.

"I told Nic Dunlop, 'Christ brought you to meet me.' Nic Dunlop quoted those words and those are the words I spoke to him," Duch said.

"I said, 'Before I used to serve human beings, but now I serve God.'"

Nic Dunlop found Duch hiding in a western Cambodian town in 1999 and later wrote a biography of the former prison chief.

Duch -- whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav -- told the court he confessed his role in the 1975 to 1979 regime after hearing Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot state that Tuol Sleng prison never existed.

"I could not bear what Pol Pot said, so I had to show my face," Duch said.

"For S-21, I was the chairman of that office. The crimes committed at S-21 were under my responsibility," he added.

Although Duch says he oversaw the brutal prison, he has maintained he never personally executed anyone and has only ever admitted to abusing two people.

The former mathematics teacher has also denied prosecutors' claims that he played a central role in the Khmer Rouge's iron-fisted rule.

He faces life in jail at the court, which does not have the power to impose the death penalty.

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and many believe the UN-sponsored tribunal is the last chance to find justice for victims of the regime, which killed up to two million people.

Photos from Duch's trial - 31 March 2009

A Cambodian man walks into the court room for a trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, at a U.N.-backed tribunal Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Prosecutors vowed Tuesday to get justice for the 1.7 million victims of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, as they opened their case against the man accused of running the communist radicals' torture machine. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian Chhim Sarom, 57, tears while she describes her biography during the Khmer Rouge regimes before attending a trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, at a U.N.-backed tribunal Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Prosecutors vowed Tuesday to get justice for the 1.7 million victims of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, as they opened their case against the man accused of running the communist radicals' torture machine. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodians wait in line to enter the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia on the second day of a UN-backed tribunal against former Toul Sleng commander Kaing Guek Eav, also know as 'Duch' Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On the first day of the trial prosecutors alleged that the former Khmer Rouge commander oversaw grisly atrocities at the Phnom Penh prison and that all who were imprisoned there were marked for death. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
British photojournalist Nic Dunlop speaks to the media as he arrives to attend the second day of the trial of former chief Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, in the outskirts of Phnom Penh March 31, 2009. Dunlop found Duch in April 1999. Duch faces trial for crimes against humanity, the first involving a senior Pol Pot cadre 30 years after the end of a regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Bour Meng, a Khmer Rouge survivor, walks out of the court room during lunch break, during the second day of the trial of chief Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh March 31, 2009. Duch faces trial for crimes against humanity, the first involving a senior Pol Pot cadre 30 years after the end of a regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Cambodian Muslim students walk into the court room for a trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, at a U.N.-backed tribunal Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodians wait in line to enter the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia on the second day of a UN-backed tribunal against former Toul Sleng commander Kaing Guek Eav, also know as 'Duch' Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On the first day of the trial prosecutors alleged that the former Khmer Rouge commander oversaw grisly atrocities at the Phnom Penh prison and that all who were imprisoned there were marked for death. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
A Cambodian Buddhist monk looks on as he and others wait in line outside the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia on the second day of a UN-backed tribunal against former Toul Sleng commander Kaing Guek Eav, also know as 'Duch' Tuesday, March 31, 2009, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On the first day of the trial prosecutors alleged that the former Khmer Rouge commander oversaw grisly atrocities at the Phnom Penh prison and that all who were imprisoned there were marked for death. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
A man watches the live feed of the trial of chief Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh March 31, 2009. Duch faces trial for crimes against humanity, the first involving a senior Pol Pot cadre 30 years after the end of a regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

The end of a long wait for Khmer justice

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Metro (UK)

'For me, trying to find Comrade Duch was not because I thought I could singlehandedly bring the Khmer Rouge to justice; I never actually believed I would find him.

It was a quest for understanding, to try and get beyond the immediate need for justice and understand how the Khmer Rouge came about.

They came to represent all that was wrong in the world to me, and I felt that if there was one person in the world who could provide an explanation, Duch was that man.'

Irish photojournalist Nic Dunlop is talking about the chief executioner of the brutal regime that ruled Cambodia for four years.

Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 1.7million Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge – a quarter of the population, a higher proportion than those killed in Nazi-occupied Europe or Rwanda. Yet 30 years on, none of the perpetrators has been held to account.

That is about to change: five former high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials are set to stand trial at the end of this month. And one of them, perhaps the most infamous after the regime's leader Pol Pot (who died in 1998), will be there because of Dunlop.

Comrade Duch (pronounced 'Doik') was head of the Khmer Rouge's secret police, in charge of Tuol Sleng, a former secondary school in Phnom Penh transformed into a torture camp. Of the 15,000 people who entered Tuol Sleng, all but seven were killed.

The prison – later turned into a genocide museum – held a grim fascination for Dunlop. On his first visit in 1989, he was horrified by the photographs taken of each inmate, including women and children.

'Nothing can prepare you for the initial shock of going into a place like that, where you're looking at photographs of people held in the rooms there and who possibly died in those rooms,' he says.

'It was a profoundly upsetting experience. And disturbing knowing most of the perpetrators of the crimes committed in this place were still alive and free. That was the thing that terrified me.'

Dunlop had long been interested in Cambodia's history. 'Cambodia became the first place to awaken me to the way the world actually was, as opposed to the way I thought it should be.'

Working there in the 1990s, he began to carry Duch's photograph in his back pocket. And in 1999, Dunlop recognised the man in the photo standing before him. A few days later, the former executioner gave himself up to police and has been in prison since.

Yet Dunlop is worried this month's trial may not provide the closure that is needed.

'Duch's trial will be important because he has the ability to point fingers: when everybody else has denied their responsibility, he can say categorically: “I know because I received orders from these people.” His testimony could be confirmation of mass murder as official Khmer Rouge policy,' says Dunlop.

'But a key purpose of the tribunal is to transmit to ordinary Cambodians what the court is doing, as well as to mete out justice. And people in the countryside have little or no understanding of the process or how it's supposed to bring about justice.'

According to a recent report by the University of California, fewer than one in ten Cambodians knew five regime suspects have been awaiting trial. And only 3.3 per cent of respondents could name the court's five detainees.

'If it's low on the list of priorities for Cambodians out in the villages – largely because they don't know and don't understand, although they have a desire to see justice done – then it brings into question the whole process.'

Beyond his issues with the tribunal, though, Dunlop believes he has found the explanation he sought 20 years ago.

'It makes sense that we always side with the victims of horrible crimes and we vilify those responsible but it doesn't help us reach a further understanding. Looking at the world of the perpetrator is probably more crucial than the world of the victim. It's easy to empathise with a victim but what happens when a victim turns out to be a perpetrator as well, like in Rwanda?

'You learn that we're all basically the same. Perhaps people like Duch are a bit like tempered metal, more prone to these kinds of things, but I don't think they're that different. It's a comforting thought, because it means we're not dealing with cartoon characters, we're dealing with real people and all the ambiguity that goes with that,' he says.

And despite the complications of the tribunal, hearing from Duch could have a wider effect.

'The realisation that we all have this ability to do great good and also great evil is a sobering one,' says Dunlop. 'If we start from that point, then we might stand a chance of preventing these things from occurring again.'

Khmer Rouge tribunal ends pretrial proceedings

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
By SOPHENG CHEANG and SUSAN POSTLEWAITE

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A long-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal wrapped up its opening session Wednesday with judges saying they still need to finalize a list of witnesses before announcing when a full trial of the former head of the regime's notorious torture center will begin.

Kaing Guek Eav — better known as Duch — is charged with crimes against humanity. He is the first of five defendants from the close-knit, ultra-communist regime that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s and turned it into a vast slave labor camp in which an estimated 1.7 million people perished.

Three decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the U.N.-assisted tribunal began a procedural session Tuesday to lay the groundwork for a full trial expected in March. The precise date has not been set and details still need to be ironed out, including who will testify.

Judge Silvia Cartwright, a former New Zealand High Court judge, told the court that the tribunal's five judges met Wednesday in private to pare down the lists of proposed witnesses to "consider whether the testimony would be redundant or repetitious."

She said judges had agreed on about 30 of the witnesses proposed by lawyers for the prosecution, defense and civil parties. They dropped a handful of witnesses and postponed a decision on about 20 others. She did not say when a decision would be made.

Among those who are to be summoned to testify are British journalist Nic Dunlop, who discovered Duch in northwestern Cambodia in 1999. An American scholar, David Chandler, the author of several books on Cambodia, will also be asked to testify, the court said.

Duch oversaw the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh — previously a school, now the Tuol Sleng genocide museum — where some 16,000 men, women and children were detained and tortured. Only a handful survived.

Duch, 66, is the only defendant who has expressed remorse for his actions. He is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape. He did not address the court Tuesday but through his lawyer he again voiced regret.

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Duch disappeared for two decades, living under two other names and converting to Christianity before he was located by Dunlop, the British journalist.

Judges also still need to decide whether to admit as evidence a short film shot by Vietnamese soldiers when they entered Tuol Sleng prison in January 1979 after toppling the Khmer Rouge.

The film, which shows decapitated bodies and previously unknown child survivors, was only released by Vietnam in December.

Co-prosecutor Chea Leang said the film provided "crucial" new facts and urged judges to admit it as evidence.

One of Duch's defense lawyers, Car Savuth, argued that the film was manufactured by the Vietnamese. He said orders had been given to kill all prisoners so there could not have been child survivors when the Vietnamese arrived.

"There were no children at S-21 — they were all executed," Duch's lawyer said, arguing that the film was "politically motivated to disguise the truth."

Duch's trial began 13 years after the tribunal was first proposed and nearly three years after the court was inaugurated.

The tribunal, which incorporates mixed teams of foreign and Cambodian judges, prosecutors and defenders, has drawn sharp criticism. Its snail-paced proceedings have been plagued by political interference from the Cambodian government as well as allegations of bias and corruption.

Others facing trial are Khieu Samphan, the group's former head of state; Ieng Sary, its foreign minister; his wife Ieng Thirith, who was minister for social affairs; and Nuon Chea, the movement's chief ideologue.

All four have denied committing crimes.

Cambodia's past stalks its people

Tuesday February 17, 2009
By Miriama Kamo in Cambodia
TVNZ (New Zealand)

We didn't really know what we were doing when we decided to go to Cambodia. We had little idea of what to expect, and even how to conduct ourselves.

How do you behave at a war crimes trial?

Luckily our ignorance had a reasonable basis. Establishing the ECCC ( Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia ) has been a decade-long process of debate and negotiation between the UN and the Cambodian government.

It took all this time to establish the parameters of the power and authority of the courts, to try five of the most senior, surviving, Khmer Rouge leaders. If even the Cambodian government and the world's parliament took considerable time to figure this thing out, then perhaps it wasn't so unusual that two Kiwis might be feeling uncertain of what to expect.

We are here to see the initial hearing of Duch, the commandant of the notorious prison Tuol Sleng, and the court's first defendant, finally swing underway. It's been 30 years since his regime officially fell , and his day in court represents decades of pain (to grossly understate it) and the hope of resolution for millions of Cambodians.

We arrived in Phnom Penh early on Monday morning to a rush of warm air and the cries of taxi drivers competing for our custom.

I'd spent the plane flight reading, denying myself the plethora of movies on offer, which if you know of my slathering loyalty to the silver screen you'll understand was quite a feat. I spent the taxi ride into Phnom Penh similarly occupied with a book written by Nic Dunlop, the photo-journalist who tracked Duch down and revealed him to the world.

Duch is his comrade Khmer Rouge name; his real name is Kaing Guek Eav.

When Dunlop found him, by chance, in the jungles near the Thai border, he'd changed his name to Hang Pin. It had been 20 years since the fall of the regime. He had run away from his past, but plainly not far enough; having said that, it was a nearly 10 year marathon effort later which finally saw him in court.

After we arrived at our guesthouse, and in an effort to comprehend Duch and the experience of being his prisoner, we went to Tuol Sleng. Having been once before we knew the layout and the content, but this time we were looking to understand, not to gawk at, the evidence of atrocities carried out in the prison while under his command.

The charges against Duch are severe: Crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions; as well as breach of the Cambodian Penal Code's offences, which include premeditated murder and torture.

While under Duch's command, it is variously reported that between 14,000 and 20,000 inmates were killed. They were tortured to extract dubious confessions of betrayal. As a result, many 'confessions' make startling claims; peasants who claimed to be CIA, KGB, or Vietnamese spies; who admitted mild or serious disrespect to Angkar, the organisation; who supposedly sought to bring down the regime by singing inappropriate songs, or by mentioning taboo topics to friends or family.

To extract these confessions, Duch's interrogators allegedly beat, whipped, burned, electrocuted, nearly drowned and hung their captives from hooks. Their execution, if disease or starvation didn't kill them first, took place just south of the city at the now infamous Killing Fields.

The accounts are chilling; victims forced to kneel at the edge of a pit, to be fatally struck and their throats cut. Babies and children were reportedly killed by dropping them from balconies in the prison or having their heads smashed against tree trunks at the Killing Fields.

Of the thousands who passed through Tuol Sleng only seven are known to have survived.

When we exited the prison we were approached by the usual crowd of amputees, refugees and victims of Khmer Rouge brutality and of landmines. A man on crutches approached, his arm stump extended sullenly for money; a burns victim, catastrophically scarred stood alongside, the gaping hole which was once his mouth permanently stretched into a ragged 'O', his lidless eyes blank, emotionless.

What was plainer to us than ever, was that Cambodia's past stalks its people, wears itself on their skin and tears at their ability to simply survive each hard day.

As one man said to me, 'life was hard under the Khmer Rouge, but it was even harder after the Khmer Rouge. We had to learn to live with the terrible pain of what had happened, often without our parents to guide us.'

The next morning we would see the beginning of Cambodia's efforts to make peace with its horrific past, and it would come in the form of the trial of, potentially, one of the most accomplished torturers the modern world has known.

When Nic Dunlop found Hang Pin and identified him as Duch, he'd converted to Christianity, and was working, with perverse irony, as an aid worker for ARC (the American Refugee Committee). He was ready to face his past, saying, 'it is God's will that you are here.'

On the trail of an executioner

17 Feb 2009
Channel 4 News (UK)

Author and photographer Nic Dunlop first tracked down Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, currently on trial in Phnom Penh for crimes against humanity.

Duch was commandant of the S-21 Tuol Send prison in Cambodia, where at least 14,000 "enemies of the revolution" were jailed and later killed.

Channel 4 News online spoke to Nic Dunlop in Bangkok.

How did you actually track down Duch?
I'd come out to Cambodia because I wanted to have an understanding of why the Khmer Rouge had happened. I began to carry round a photograph of Duch with me. He was a key lnk between the Khmer Rouge leadership and the killing of the Khmer Rouge's enemies.

Of all the people in the world that you'd like to talk to to explain this period, Duch would be the man. A year prior to meeting him (in 1999) I began to carry around a photo.

One day, while on a routine assignment in the west of Cambodia, I had a day off. There was a meeting in a former Khmer Rouge zone which I'd always wanted to go to.

"Of all the people in the world that you'd like to talk to to explain this period, Duch would be the man."

I was wandering around and this mean wearing an American Refugee Committee T-shirt came up to me and introduced himself. So the meeting was largely accidental.

Duch felt protected where he was, and that no matter what happened he would be looked after. Most of these people (a reference to four other high-ranking Khmer Rouge functionaries, due to be tried later this year) were never on a wanted list.

Duch seemed quite keen to tell me that he was a Christian, that he'd seen the light. And I think he just assumed that I would be a Christian.

Several meetings later I, along with Nate Thayer (the last western journalist to have interviewed Pol Pot), confronted Duch. I'm not sure he was aware of why we'd come. He then began an extraordinary confession where he talked about his role as Pot Polt's executioner.

And he's remained true to his word that he's gong to tell as much of the truth as he can. That will be devastating for the rest of them.

How easy or difficult will it be to convict the others if Duch's conviction fails?
Proving they were aware of what Duch was doing isn't going to be difficult. Proving their involvement is going to be more difficult.

When I talked with Duch in 1999 we presented him with signed lists of victim's confessions. But he said the signatures were not his writing but belonged to the others. But I think it may be very difficult to make the link with the others.

30 years on, what meaning does the present process have for Cambodians?
For those who are aware of it, yes, it is meaningful. I've never met anybody who didn't want some accounting, who didn't believe it was terribly important.

But very little is understood outside Phnom Penh. There's a chasm between the world of rural Cambodia and urban Cambodia.

"There's a chasm between the world of rural Cambodia and urban Cambodia."

The problem with this tribunal is that 85 per cent have little or no understanding of the tribunal or don't know about it. The rest know about the tribunal, but beyond that very few people understand it.

At least one lawyer I spoke to said, "We've failed to explain what we're going." I met one woman who had been a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge for three years, and she had no idea that the tribunal was happening.

Cambodia's torture chief set to face justice

February 16, 2009
ABC Radio Australia

Cambodia's UN-backed special court, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, opens in Phnom Penh tomorrow.

The proceedings will be broadcast 'live' on Cambodian television .. and first up will be former prison chief, Kaing Guek Eav -- better known as Duch. The 66 year old faces charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and pre-meditated murder for his role in running S-21, a high school in Phnom Penh, transformed into a notorious prison. The communist Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia in April 1975 and immediately began dismantling modern society in their drive to transform the country into an agrarian utopia.

Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Nic Dunlop, the man who tracked down Duch, and author of 'The Lost Executioner', published by Bloomsbury

Click here to listen to the audio program in English (Windows Media)

DUNLOP: Well, I first went to Cambodia in 89, so it was exactly 10 years later that I stumbled on Duch in 1999, and of course, here we are ten years later and he is the first to go on trial. But the reason that I focused in on Duch is that he was a man at the centre of the killing, but also who had links to the leadership, so he could actually explain the chain of command and responsibility. At the same time, I wanted to understand the kind of pathology of somebody who could carry out horrific acts on a daily basis.

LAM: The general consensus is that Duch will be helpful to the ECCC or the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as it's commonly known because he confessed to his role at Tuol Sleng. Do you agree with that view point?

DUNLOP: Yes, from what I understand is that he's been more than cooperative and so he's actually remained true to what he told me in 1999, that he wanted the truth to be known about what happened.

LAM: What were your first impressions when you met Duch?

DUNLOP: I suppose one is incredulity, because on the one hand, yes I was looking for him and keeping an eye out for him, but then to find that he actually walked up to me in the end was a little startling. So it took a rather surreal quality. And I also did not know his position in the area that I met him at the time, so it was very difficult to ascertain as to whether he had actually left the Khmer Rouge police or special branch, which he used to head or whether he was simply as he claimed a school teacher.

LAM: So how did he strike you?

DUNLOP: I think he was a rather sort of eccentric figure. He was all and rather wiry looking I suppose and he extremely friendly, not perhaps the idea that a lot of people may have of a killer.

LAM: Indeed, someone once spoke about the ordinariness of evil and I am paraphrasing here. Did that strike you about Duch .. that he was perhaps, either willingly or not, part of this very evil process and yet seemed a most unlikely candidate?

DUNLOP: What's disturbing is how much we have in common. In fact, if we're really honest, we all carry the ability to carry out horrific acts with us all the time. It's just that we luckily for the vast majority of us have never been in a position where that has occurred. So I think the disturbing aspect of it is the fact that people like Duch are extremely ordinary. There is nothing that would suggest that they were necessarily killers immediately to you and that is where it becomes very, very disconcerting.

LAM: Did he speak to you about his time at Tuol Sleng at all?

DUNLOP: Yes, at the time he expressed what appeared to be genuine remorse. He said that I was very sorry for the killings and he felt that the truth about what had happened in Tuol Sleng and elsewhere should be made known to the world. It was an extraordinary confession and an extraordinary moment. But you also have to remember that this is tempered by the fact that the background to this is the death of thousands of innocent men, women and children. But just exactly how sorry he is or to what extent he will tell the truth remains to be seen.

LAM: You're listening to Connect Asia on Radio Australia. In Phnom Penh, we're heard on 101.5FM and in Vientianne 96 FM and this morning I am speaking with Nic Dunlop, author of the book "The Lost Executioner".

Nick Dunlop, how important is it for Cambodians that he acknowledges what he did?

DUNLOP: Incumbent I think that's very, very significant. It's very rare that you will meet people who you can say this in many cultures that people admit to wrongdoings and admit to extremely difficult things. I think that most people, everyone carries around with them bad memories that you would much rather pack away. To find somebody in a culture where it is not very reflective, in general, most people don't tend to analyse a great deal of their actions. I think it's extremely significant. All the Khmer Rouge to date, bar Duch, have shifted responsibility or made up excuses or other, but Duch is the only one who has actually spoken anything approaching the whole truth about what has happened.

LAM: How important is it do you think for the present generations of Cambodians, that this Khmer Rouge Tribunal, not just bring the perpetrators to justice, but also be seen to be bringing some kind of closure for the country?

DUNLOP: Well, my own view is that it is as important that the vast majority of the population, most of whom never experienced the Khmer Rouge, that they understand this process, why it's important, why it relates to them and their society and this is an area that I think the tribunal has yet to prove itself. So I think it's extremely important that it's understood beyond the walls of the actual tribunal itself. The trouble is that according to a recent report, 81 per cent of the population have little or no knowledge or understanding of the process, and I think that's a cause for serious concern. There is a danger that this whole process will become irrelevant.

LAM: Do you think it's important to broaden the hearings or do you think this is, even though it might be a symbolic gesture, symbolic process, that this in itself is better than nothing?

DUNLOP: I think it is better than nothing, but I do believe to have real credibility it's got to widen the net. There are many, many more people alive who are directly involved in the killings, indeed, there are at least two candidates for prosecution who have not been indited yet, who are directly responsible for sending people to Tuol Sleng and to Duch. So when you are holding only five to ten people accountable for crimes that were committed 30 years ago, that they understand why that is and the danger is that they don't. In fact, from my experience, they don't. I mean I think it's important to widen the net as much as is possible - certainly for the next tier of Khmer leaders who haven't .. or nobody as yet has been charged.

Cambodia's trial by fire

Nic Dunlop was born in Ireland in 1969. His work has appeared in numerous publications worldwide. In 1999, he received an award for Excellence in International Journalism from Johns Hopkins for exposing the head of the Khmer Rouge secret police, Comrade Duch. Dunlop lives in Bangkok, Thailand.

A former Khmer Rouge figure's indictment could be a turning point for the country.

August 21, 2007
By Nic Dunlop
Los Angeles Times (Calif., USA)

Last month, nearly 30 years after the Khmer Rouge reign of terror, the first indictment was issued by a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia. From 1975 to 1979, more than 1.7 million people died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot. Now, after years of prolonged negotiations and conniving by the international community, the tribunal finally looks set to begin its work.

The man awaiting trial is Kang Kek Ieu -- alias Comrade Duch, and referred to as Kaing Geuk Eav in tribunal filings -- Pol Pot's chief executioner and butcher. As the commandant of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, he is allegedly responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women and children. Duch has been charged with crimes against humanity.

Growing up in Ireland and England, I was shocked by revelations about what happened under the Khmer Rouge. As an adult, I based myself in Bangkok, working as a photographer. After making frequent trips to Cambodia, it occurred to me that if the world was serious about preventing such crimes in the future, it was crucial to understand the perpetrators. And I felt that if there was one man who could provide us with answers on the Khmer Rouge, it was Duch. He was the missing link between the killings and the leaders.

For about a year, I took to carrying a photo of him. I showed it to Cambodians I met to see if anyone recognized him. None did. Then, in 1999, while on assignment in the west of the country, I came face to face with him.

Duch had become a born-again Christian. After several meetings, he began to talk candidly about his role during the reign of terror. It was the first time that a senior cadre had ever confirmed mass murder as policy. "I have done very bad things before in my life," he said. "The killings must be understood. The truth should be known." He began to name names and establish a chain of command for the killings. As a result of my finding him, and his extraordinary confession, he was arrested. Today, he remains the only Khmer Rouge in custody.

Why has so little been done to bring to trial the perpetrators of the Cambodian holocaust? After the regime was overthrown in 1979, the quest for justice was sidelined during the Cold War because of the competing interests of the U.S., China and the Soviet Union. Cambodia had become a pawn.

After the Khmer Rouge was ousted, and despite its barbarous record, Pol Pot's men continued to be recognized as Cambodia's legal representatives at the United Nations, and the U.S. supported a guerrilla coalition they dominated. When the Cold War ended, the Khmer Rouge continued its fight to regain power. In the mid-'90s, as part of a strategy to defeat the guerrillas, the Cambodian government granted amnesty to Khmer Rouge members if they defected to the government side. Justice was exchanged for peace. Eventually the movement imploded.

Some former Khmer Rouge members now hold positions within the army and government. Many are old and frail men in their 70s. Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's right-hand man, and Khieu Samphan, the regime's former head of state, live freely in Cambodia -- although they are likely among those whom the tribunal will seek to indict. Some leaders, like Pol Pot, have escaped justice and taken their secrets to the grave. In all, only five to 12 Khmer Rouge leaders may be brought to trial.

Because he was Pol Pot's chief executioner, Duch's trial will be one of the most important. If he speaks as he did in 1999, Duch can explain the decision-making for the regime's atrocities and the chain of command and responsibility.

But after so many years, and with so few infirm and elderly cadres likely to be indicted, some people have questioned the purpose of a tribunal and a trial.

And yet Cambodia remains a society plagued by violence. A trial could help establish an understanding of the importance of due process of law to replace the current cycle of impunity and revenge. It is also important for people to see that leaders are not immune from prosecution. Many believe that this lack of accountability is one of the most enduring legacies of Khmer Rouge rule.

To counter the violence, the details of the process must be made accessible to a wide audience. With the tribunal, a completely alien and complex system of justice is being introduced to a largely uneducated population. What will people think when only a few old men whom some may never have heard of go on trial in Phnom Penh, but the man who killed their relatives, living in the same village, literally gets away with murder? As the head of Duch's defense team told me, "There will be many people who will be disappointed."

The biggest challenge for this tribunal is to demonstrate not only justice being done but, more crucially, justice understood. The key is not whether to find a group of old men guilty, but to explain how they are guilty. The tribunal also would be public acknowledgment of the suffering of those who survived and a means for the U.N. to show that when nearly 2 million people are killed, it matters.

Nic Dunlop is a photographer and author of "The Lost Executioner," the story of how Comrade Duch was found.

Torturer runs out of time

Rare survivor ... Vann Nath Main holds one of his paintings of a prisoner at the Tuol Sleng interrogation centre. (Photo: Andrew Meares)

August 4, 2007
The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

After years under assumed names, Comrade Duch is facing justice, writes Connie Levett.

HE INTRODUCED himself as Hang Pin, just another Cambodian camp worker in a white T-shirt emblazoned with the American Refugee Committee logo, helping out on the Thai-Cambodian border.

He didn't look like a monster, but a British photographer, Nic Dunlop, recognised him immediately as Comrade Duch, head of the notorious Khmer Rouge Security Prison 21 (S-21), where 17,000 people were interrogated, tortured and finally sent for execution. Duch meticulously documented his work, leaving behind a haunting gallery of frightened and defiant faces - now the Tuol Sleng museum.

This week, 28 years after the regime fell, Hang Pin - whose real name is Kang Kek Ieu but who was known as Comrade Duch - now 64, became the first man charged in relation to the Cambodian genocide. After years of wrangling over funding, and the independence of the genocide tribunal, the charge has raised hopes among the scarred population that justice may yet be done.

Dr Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, said that although the world knew who the prime suspects were, it was "very significant for Cambodia to have a judicial process which responded to the call for justice".

The centre has, for 10 years, been chronicling the genocide that killed more than 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979. "Every one of us lost at least one family member," Dr Chhang said, describing the genocide trials as a real foundation to bring closure so people could go on with their lives.

Vann Nath, one of only seven survivors of S-21, is keen to testify. "If they don't bring them to court, [the Khmer Rouge] won't know what they did was wrong. We need them to be responsible for what they did. If we don't do it, the young generation will not know what is wrong and what is right," he told the Herald this year. Vann Nath survived because Duch liked his painting style, setting him to work creating portraits of Brother No. 1, Pol Pot.

Pol Pot, who led the murderous regime, died in 1998, never having to account for his actions. Brother No. 3, Ta Mok, the military commander, died last year.

Twenty years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, Duch must have felt quite comfortable with his new identity. In Samlaut village in 1999, "Hang Pin" was friendly and off guard - telling Dunlop he had been a mathematics teacher and fled Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge took power. In fact, he fled the capital in 1979 and did not leave the party until 1992. He then converted to Christianity and worked, under assumed names, for the United Nations and other aid bodies, in the refugee camps.

What he could not know was that Dunlop had made it a personal mission to find him. Working as a freelance photographer in Cambodia, he carried Duch's photo in his pocket and showed it to villagers wherever he went, asking, "Have you seen this man?" When he saw Hang Pin, he knew immediately.

"They thought I was mad," said Dunlop, who is now based in Bangkok. He did not confront Duch on the first day, discreetly taking photos before returning with another journalist a few weeks later to challenge him as to his identity. Duch did not deny it.

Duch rationalised his actions, saying he was just following orders and would have been killed himself had he not.

"It's true he was following orders but in terms of being able to influence decisions that were made, he also has a responsibility," Dunlop said.

"A key part of his case in this tribunal is whether he remains true to what he told me in 1999, which is 'Yes, I am responsible but so are these other people. I did follow the orders.' If he confesses to that it should be an incredible testimony."

In 1999 Duch told Dunlop that Pol Pot; Brother No. 2, Nuon Chea; and Ta Mok all knew what was going on inside S-21. Khieu Samphan, the chief ideologue, was also aware but less so.

The tribunal has indicated it will charge another four as-yet-unnamed Khmer Rouge leaders. Duch's testimony could assist in their prosecution.

Dr Chhang describes him as "a join between the lower and higher levels of the regime. He was chief of a prison, one of 189 across the country but his prison was at a level where most of the prisoners were officials of the Khmer Rouge itself, who had become enemies who needed to be purged."

Duch's trial is expected to begin early next year. Dunlop, who wrote about his search for Duch in The Lost Executioner, is not sure if he will attend.

"It seemed inconceivable to me growing up in the West that things like this could occur. [What happened in] Cambodia represented everything evil in the world," he said.

In trying to comprehend how it could happen, he realised it is important to understand the perpetrators as much as it is to empathise with victims.

"At the end, these monsters so-called are people, human beings. There was nothing to indicate [Duch] was anything other than ordinary. The thing is we can relate to these people, they are not different to us."

‘Kill every last one’

Sunday July 22, 2007
Review by MARTIN SPICE
The Star Online (Malaysia)

This is a story that needed to be told, and that needs to be listened to.

THE LOST EXECUTIONER
By Nic Dunlop
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 316 pages
(ISBN: 978-0747566717)

IF you have been to Cambodia in recent years, the chances are that you will have been to Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh. There is a savage irony in the fact that this former secondary school that was used as a prison and torture centre by the Khmer Rouge regime is now on the tourist trail.

In the mid to late 1970s, men, women and children arrived at Tuol Sleng, or SS 21 as it was codenamed, in the middle of the night and left only to be executed in what came to be called the killing fields. Now, men, women and children arrive in coaches and depart for lunch in their nice hotels, many of them shocked and chastened by what they have seen.

Visiting Toul Sleng is a brutal experience. It has been left more or less as the liberating Vietnamese forces found it in 1979. School buildings that look pretty much like any others of the era were crudely converted into a high security prison. Iron bedsteads that were used to transmit electric shocks still sit in the downstairs rooms and there are dark stains on the floors.

Upstairs is a long iron bar to which prisoners were shackled lying down and elsewhere, on the wall, is a signboard that tells prisoners how they must behave. Point 6 advises, “Whilst getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.”

Of the 20,000 people who passed through Toul Sleng’s gates, just seven survived.

Yet, for all the horror of the physical environment of Toul Sleng, it is the photographs of some of these 20,000 that haunt the visitor most. The Khmer Rouge were fastidious about keeping records and every prisoner was photographed when they entered the prison.

These black and white portraits are chilling. The faces are often expressionless, the eyes blank. These are the faces of the condemned, of men, women and children who surely knew that they were about to suffer indescribably and then die at the end of it. And for what? For a confession that they had been CIA collaborators, or sympathised with the Vietnamese or ? whatever their torturers wanted to hear, for not until there was a signed confession could execution release them from their torment. The fact that the confessions were wildly improbable and wholly made up was not important; what was important was the signed document.

It was these pictures that haunted photographer Nic Dunlop and, in turn, he started to photograph them. But it was the discovery of a photograph of Comrade Duch that began his obsessive search for the director of SS 21.

Armed with this photograph, Dunlop set off to find the man who had presided over the madness that was Tuol Sleng and The Lost Executioner is his account of the history of Toul Sleng, of his interviews with people who worked there, with one of the seven who survived and finally of his success in meeting Comrade Duch. It is a gripping, horrifying and important story.

At the beginning of the book is a photograph of Duch as a boy. He has thick black hair, neatly parted, and is looking directly into the camera. He is neatly turned out for what is clearly a studio shot and he looks slightly solemn as befits such a serious occasion, with just the merest hint of a smile.

The next picture, chronologically, sees Duch in standard Khmer Rouge attire, seated behind a microphone addressing an invisible audience. It is this photograph that Dunlop carried around Cambodia in his back pocket until, eventually, he was able to identify Duch in 1999 and get him to confess to his deeds as director of SS 21.

The Lost Executioner is a grim read but it is a story that needs to be told and needs to be listened to. It is fraught with questions and moral dilemmas. How did this almost cherubic boy become the man who could scrawl with impunity, “Kill every last one of them” on prisoners’ files and become “one of the worst mass murderers of the 20th century”?

How valid is it to claim, as many Khmer Rouge have done, that they did what they did because they were “just obeying orders” and would have themselves been killed had they not done so?

After being identified, Duch is imprisoned, but in the preceding years he had converted to Christianity and was known as a talented and compassionate aid worker.

Would it have been better for him to have atoned for his sins by helping others rather than languishing pointlessly in a jail?

And on a bigger issue, why have there been no trials of the Khmer Rouge leaders? Why was the West so blind to what was happening in Cambodia that it actually recognised the Khmer Rouge as a legitimate regime?

The Lost Executioner is a fine book that puts flesh onto the horrifying statistics that tell the story of the Khmer Rouge genocide, five years in which approximately two million people – nearly a quarter of the population – died. At one point in the book, Dunlop refers to Stalin’s chilling quote that one death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic. Thoughtful, reflective and compelling, The Lost Executioner brings home forcefully that this particular set of statistics is almost unbearably tragic.