Nuon Chea, ideologue of Khmer Rouge, dies at 93

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia— Nuon Chea, the chief ideologue of the communist Khmer Rouge regime that destroyed a generation of Cambodians, died Sunday, the country’s U.n.-assisted genocide tribunal said. He was 93.

Nuon Chea was known as Brother No. 2, the right-hand man of Pol Pot, the leader of the regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The group’s fanatical efforts to realize a utopian society led to the death of some 1.7 million people — more than a quarter of the country’s population at the time — from starvation, disease, overwork and executions.

Researchers believe Nuon Chea was responsible for the extremist policies of the Khmer Rouge and was directly involved in its purges and executions.

He was serving life in prison after convictions by the U.n.backed tribunal on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

But Nuon Chea never admitted his guilt.

At the long-awaited Khmer Rouge trials, he told a court that he and his comrades were not “bad people,” denying responsibility for any deaths.

For decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Nuon Chea lived quietly with his family in a wooden house in Pailin, a former guerrilla stronghold near the border with Thailand.

“I wasn’t a war criminal,” he said in a 2004 interview with The Associated Press. “I admit that there was a mistake. But I had my ideology. I wanted to free my country. I wanted people to have well-being.”

He was arrested in Nuon Chea 2007 to face trial along with other surviving but ailing top Khmer Rouge leaders, and charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture.

Three decades after his accused crimes, Nuon Chea took the stand as an old man with white hair and sunken cheeks.

“I don’t want the next generation to misunderstand history. I don’t want them to believe the Khmer Rouge are bad people, are criminals,” Nuon Chea testified in 2011 at the age of 85. “Nothing is true about that.”

During his testimony, he insisted that the regime was not responsible for any atrocities and reiterated long-standing Khmer Rouge claims that mass graves found after the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power held the bodies of people killed by Vietnamese troops.

Vietnam drove the Khmer Rouge from power in early 1979.