Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It wasn't until July 2010 that Duch was convicted and sentenced to 35 years prison—a
term reduced to just 19 to reflect the defendant's cooperation with the court and a period
of illegal detention that followed his arrest. The verdict was historic, but the apparent le-
niency of the sentence bewildered many victims. Here was a man who as a prisoner of
the ECCC enjoyed better standards of nutrition and health care than most Cambodians.
Here was a man who admitted being responsible for thousands of deaths, yet received
a lighter sentence than some petty criminals. “I am not satisfied!” S-21 survivor Chum
Mey cried outside the courtroom after the verdict was handed down. “We are victims two
times, once in the Khmer Rouge time and now once again.”
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Defense and prosecution both appealed the verdict. In February 2012 the Supreme
Court Chamber made its final ruling, increasing Duch's sentence to life. Victims ap-
plauded the harsher sentence, but the judgment dropped any recognition of Duch's eight-
year illegal detention, which rights activists saw as a breach of the defendant's rights.
Nothing better illustrated the difficulty the tribunal had in reconciling international leg-
al standards with Cambodian realities. In their initial verdict, ECCC judges hewed to
international standards, but left many victims deflated. On appeal, victims got what
they wanted, but only after legal standards were watered down somewhat. “International
standards” of justice had collided with very different local understandings.
Aside from the delays, Duch's trial proceeded with relatively little friction, in large part
because it offered a compelling narrative of contrition and redemption which moved
along politically predictable lines. Like the CPP's official version of history, it treated
S-21 as the pivot of the Khmer Rouge nightmare, overlooking the tens of thousands who
had perished at forgotten rural prisons like Wat O Trakuon, described in the opening
chapter of this topic. For better or worse, Duch and his prison had become emblematic of
Democratic Kampuchea.
If Case 001 was relatively straightforward, Case 002 loomed as a legal and political
labyrinth. Its mammoth indictment ran to 772 pages, and included charges of forced
evacuations, forced marriage, torture, executions, enslavement, and genocide against eth-
nic Vietnamese and Cham Muslim populations. Its four defendants—Nuon Chea, Khieu
Samphan, Ieng Sary, and Ieng Thirith—denied every charge. Instead of admitting their
clients' guilt and pleading for mitigation, as Duch's lawyers did, the Case 002 defense
teams made it clear that they planned to put the ECCC itself on trial, aggressively high-
lighting cases of corruption and political interference.
Political roadblocks had already gone up during the investigative phase, when the first
international co-investigating judge, Marcel Lemonde, summonsed six Cambodian offi-
cials for questioning in 2009. They included Chea Sim, Heng Samrin, Keat Chhon, and
Hor Namhong—the four senior government officials believed to have the closest links to
