Khmer Rouge Leader Denies Ordering Killings

A prominent Khmer Rouge leader has offered a rare apology for the many killings during the regime’s 1970s rule but claimed that he had no hand in the atrocities.

The statement by Khieu Samphan came as preparations are underway for a U.N.-assisted tribunal to try the few surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, under whose rule an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died of disease, overwork, starvation or execution.

“For those compatriots who lost their loved ones during that period, I apologize,” he wrote in an open letter to Cambodians. He said he held no decision-making powers.

Khieu Samphan, 70, had previously apologized for the atrocities but not in such detail or in writing.