KI-Media2 KI Media Khmer Rouge Co-Founder Dies Amid Trial

Top photo: Khieu Samphan, Nguyen Huu Tho and Ieng Sary

Ieng Sary, a co-founder of Cambodia’s former Khmer Rouge regime, died Thursday at age 87, amid a trial over his role in one of the worst genocides in the 20th century.

March 14, 2013
By CHUN HAN WONG
The Wall Street Journal

The former deputy prime minister and foreign minister died in the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh at 8:45 a.m. local time, said Lars Olsen, a spokesman for the U.N.-backed tribunal set up to try the Khmer Rouge’s most senior leaders. Ieng Sary had been hospitalized since March 4, when he was admitted for “digestion problems,” Mr. Olsen said, adding that the tribunal will issue a report on the cause of death on an unspecified date.

Ieng Sary, along with three other top Khmer Rouge members, was indicted in 2010 on a raft of charges that include crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes.

Khmer Rouge, a radical communist insurgency that controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, came to power in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and sought to create an agricultural utopia under the leadership of the late Pol Pot. The regime is blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people during its reign.

The group forced residents of Cambodian cities to relocate to rural collectives, but many of the farms failed spectacularly, making it difficult for residents to survive. About a fifth of the country’s population at the time died of starvation, illness or were killed.

After their defeat by Vietnam-backed forces in 1979, the Khmer Rouge retreated into the jungle where it fought a guerrilla war before its dissolution in the 1990s. Ieng Sary defected in 1996 and was arrested in 2007.

It isn’t immediately clear if Ieng Sary’s death would affect the U.N.-backed trial against the two remaining accused: Nuon Chea, a former acting prime minister who is considered one of the Khmer Rouge’s main ideologues; and Khieu Samphan, a former head of state. Ieng Thirith, Ieng Sary’s wife and a former government minister, was released in September after the tribunal found her unfit to stand trial due to severe dementia.

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Posted By Heng Soy to KI Media at 3/14/2013 12:45:00 PM

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