'Killing fields' trio go on trial before the UN

Three senior Khmer Rouge leaders accused of orchestrating Cambodia's "killing fields" went on trial today at a UN-backed tribunal in Phnom Penh.

An estimated 1.7 million people died of execution, starvation, exhaustion or lack of medical care as a result of the Khmer Rouge's policies, which turned Cambodia into a forced labour camp as the movement tried to create a pure agrarian socialist society.

Clair Duffy, of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which has been monitoring the work of the tribunal, said: "It's the first time the senior leadership of the Khmer Rouge is being tried by a court with international backing." The defendants are 85-year-old Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologist and the No 2 leader behind the late Pol Pot; Khieu Samphan, 80, an ex-head of state; and Ieng Sary, 86, the former foreign minister.

Amid concerns that one or more of the defendants could die before verdicts are reached, the tribunal has split up the indictments into separate trials to expedite the proceedings. The first trial is considering the forced movement of people and crimes against humanity.

The tribunal, which was established in 2006, has tried just one case, convicting Kaing Guek Eav, the former head of the regime's S-21 prison, last July and sentencing him to 35 years. That trial was seen as simpler than the new case, partly because Kaing Guek Eav confessed to his crimes.
The Khmer Rouge's supreme leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 in Cambodia's jungles while a prisoner of his comrades.