Khieu Samphan, 90, one of many brutal regime’s few public faces, was sentenced in 2018 by a UN-backed court docket to life in jail for genocide.
The final surviving senior Khmer Rouge chief has denied duty for genocide dedicated greater than 40 years in the past in Cambodia throughout his closing remarks to a global tribunal.
Below the brutal Khmer Rouge regime led by “Brother Number one” Pol Pot, some two million Cambodians died from overwork, hunger and mass executions from 1975 to 1979.
Khieu Samphan, 90, one of many secretive regime’s few public faces, was sentenced in 2018 by a United Nations-backed court docket to life in jail for genocide dedicated towards ethnic-minority Vietnamese.
However his attorneys have argued since Monday in daylong enchantment hearings that the tribunal took a “selective method” to witness testimony to convict him.
“I categorically refuse the accusation that I had the intention to commit the crimes,” Khieu Samphan mentioned on Thursday on the finish of the hearings.
“I’ve by no means dedicated them.”
He mentioned his responsibility as president was guaranteeing nationwide sovereignty and independence from Vietnam, whose invasion toppled the regime.
Not one of the cadres has admitted being behind the atrocities of the “killing fields”, which worn out 1 / 4 of Cambodia’s inhabitants.
The three-year trial, which led to 2017, included the testimony of greater than 100 witnesses who described in chilling element the abuses and mass murders dedicated towards Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese.
Khieu Samphan claimed he was not a part of the killing machine that exterminated almost 1 / 4 of Cambodia’s inhabitants, rejecting in forceful closing statements the label of “assassin”.
However the court docket sentenced him to life in jail – alongside “Brother Quantity 2” Nuon Chea who died in 2019 – for genocide and a litany of different crimes, together with pressured marriages and rapes.
The pair had been beforehand handed life sentences by the court docket in 2014 for crimes towards humanity over the violent pressured evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975, when Khmer Rouge troops drove the inhabitants of the capital into rural labour camps.
Responsible verdicts have to this point been reached by the Extraordinary Chambers within the Courts of Cambodia towards three former prime regime members, however a number of have died whereas on trial or earlier than indictments had been made.
Pol Pot, the architect of the “12 months Zero” revolution that sought to create a peasant utopia, died in 1998.
Regardless of the verdict to his enchantment on genocide fees could also be, Khieu Samphan mentioned on Thursday his destiny was already sealed.
“It doesn’t matter what you determine, I’ll die in jail,” he mentioned. “I’m judged symbolically, slightly than by my precise deeds as a person.”
The decision for the enchantment is predicted to come back in 2022.