Convicted Khmer Rouge prison chief discharged from hospital
PHNOM PENH: The former chief interrogator and torturer for Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge has been discharged from hospital after a health scare that lasted weeks, an official told AFP yesterday.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, is serving a life sentence for managing the Phnom Penh detention centre S-21 where some 15,000 people were confined and sent to their deaths in nearby ‘ Killing Fields’ in the late 1970s.
The former mathematics teacherturneddiehard revolutionary was the first member of the Khmer Rouge to face judgement before a war crimes tribunal in Cambodia and was sent to live out his remaining days in Kandal prison after an appeal extended his original sentence to life in 2012.
Duch fell ill with respiratory problems in late October and was rushed to hospital in the capital Phnom Penh where his condition was deemed serious at the time, but the head of the prison said he pulled through.
“I did not hope he would survive,” Chat Sineang, director of the Kandal prison, told AFP.
“But he has recovered from the illness and he arrived back at the prison on Monday evening.”
He said, however, that Duch – who turns 76 in a few days – was still weak and needed help from guards when he wanted to use the bathroom.
Duch was arrested in 1999 after being discovered working for a Christian aid agency under a false name.
His trial was a landmark for victims seeking justice for crimes under the Khmer Rouge regime, whose dreams of an communist agrarian paradise led to the deaths of up to two million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979. — AFP