Khmer Rouge court wants ex-president: policeman

Khmer Rouge court wants ex-president: policeman

By Ek Madra
Reuters
Thursday, November 15, 2007; 5:06 AM

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia 's "Killing Fields" tribunal is set to arrest ex-Khmer Rouge president Khieu Samphan after hospital health checks in Phnom Penh , a senior police official said on Thursday.

The French-educated guerrilla leader, a close ally of late regime leader Pol Pot, was flown to the capital on Wednesday suffering from "numbness" after falling from a hammock at his home in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin on the Thai border.

However, his 24-year-old daughter said he was on the mend. "He told us not to worry," Khieu Maly said, adding that her father now felt "fine."

The police official said the government had been told of court plans to arrest Khieu Samphan on Friday and his recovery was a green light to hand him over to face charges relating to the deaths of the Khmer Rouge's estimated 1.7 million victims.

"There's no need to give him a return ticket," the policeman said. "It was a one-way trip."

Another police official said it was unlikely Khieu Samphan, thought to be 78, would be returning home even though he was feeling better, although a tribunal spokesman would neither confirm nor deny that an arrest warrant had been issued.

His transfer to hospital came amid a flurry of activity by the long-awaited Khmer Rouge tribunal, which started work in earnest a few months ago after nearly a decade of delays caused by wrangling over jurisdiction and cash.

Former foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife -- both life-long friends of "Brother Number One" Pol Pot -- were arrested and charged on Monday with crimes against humanity for their role in the regime's 1975-1979 reign of terror.

"Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, who had also lived in Pailin, is in the court's custody on similar charges, as is the Beijing-backed regime's chief jailer, Duch, who ran Phnom Penh's "S-21" torture and interrogation centre.

Khieu Samphan was the leading intellectual among the small group of Cambodian students in 1950s Paris who became imbued with communism and returned home to the southeast Asian nation to form the core of the guerrilla movement that became the Khmer Rouge.

However, he published a book three years ago portraying himself as a virtual prisoner of the regime and denying knowledge of any atrocities.

Many of the Khmer Rouge's victims were executed. The rest died of disease, starvation or overwork as Pol Pot pursued his dream of creating an agrarian peasant utopia. Pol Pot died in 1998 in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng.

(Writing by Ed Cropley; editing by Michael Battye and Roger Crabb) © 2007 Reuters