Khmer Rouge man faces genocide case

The trial of Kaing Guek Eav - known as Duch - is the first against the militant communists who turned the country into a killing field three decades ago.

A UN-assisted genocide tribunal has charged the 66-year-old with committing crimes against humanity and war crimes, plus torture and homicide.

In court, he stood when asked to identify himself and gave his name as "Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch," his nom de guerre. He then listed other names he used while in hiding after the regime's fall.

The tribunal is seeking to establish responsibility for the group's brutal 1975-79 misrule of the country, when an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died of starvation, medical neglect, slave-like working conditions and execution.

"Cambodians have been waiting 30 years for the Khmer Rouge to be tried for the violence and suffering they inflicted upon the population," said Professor Alex Hinton, director of Rutgers University's Centre for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. "That day has arrived."

Duch ran the group's main prison, the notorious torture centre known as S-21, or Tuol Sleng, in Phnom Penh.

He holds the distinction of being not only the first member of the Khmer Rouge to face trial for the regime's atrocities, but also the only one to express remorse for his role.

As many as 16,000 men, women and children were brutally tortured at Tuol Sleng before being sent to their deaths.

Duch disappeared after the group fell from power, living under two other names. He returned to teaching and converted to Christianity before he was discovered by chance by a British journalist in the Cambodian countryside in 1999.