Lawyers seek release of Khmer Rouge prison chief

A day after their client apologized to victims of the Cambodian genocide, lawyers for a notorious Khmer Rouge prison chief argued Wednesday for his release by the war crimes court.

Defense lawyers for Kang Kek Ieu, 66, who Tuesday accepted responsibility for the torture and execution of thousands of fellow Cambodians, argued that the rights of their client had been trampled on by the court after nearly a decade in detention.

“Detention for 10 years is no longer provisional detention,” said Francois Roux, one of Kang’s lawyers. Any sentence should be reduced by the period Kang spent in pretrial detention, Roux also argued.

Co-prosecutors replied that releasing Kang on bail after a detailed public account of the torture that took place in the prison camp he ran would put him at risk. Victims and victims’ families “could take revenge,” co-prosecutor Chea Leang said.

The court did not rule Wednesday on the defense request.

Kang, who is better known by the nom de guerre Duch, told the court Tuesday he was “full of shame and regret” for his role as chief of Tuol Sleng torture center, code-named S-21, where more than 12,000 men, women and children were tortured before being executed in the nearby “killing fields” outside Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

He insisted that he was following orders under threat that he and his family would be killed if he disobeyed.

Kang is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and premeditated murder. He is one of five detained senior Khmer Rouge leaders believed to be the architects of the regime’s fanatical rule in the late 1970s, during which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians were slain or perished from overwork or starvation.

A day after Kang delivered his apology, several observers were unmoved.

“I don’t accept his apology,” said Chum Mey, one of the few to survive S-21. “I don’t think it was sincere, especially now after his lawyers tried to argue for his release. He apologized to gain the sympathy of the court for a lower sentence.

“Duch said he was taking orders; the person who tortured me on Duch’s orders said the same thing,” he added.

Silke Studzensky, a German lawyer representing 18 Cambodians who are registered with the court as civil parties, said her clients, including three Tuol Sleng survivors, had already decided: They rejected Kang’s overture.

She asked judges to allow a selection of her clients to respond before the tribunal to the apology; judges postponed ruling on the request.

Her clients continue to see Kang as a willing participant in mass murder and not as someone who could not escape his orders, Studzensky said.

“For them, he believed in the regime’s ideologies -- he believed every enemy needed to be ‘smashed,’ ” she said. “He presented himself as a victim, but they don’t see him that way.”

His trial is scheduled to resume next week.

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Brady is a special correspondent. Special correspondent Keo Kounila contributed to this report.