Originally published on the CGS blog on September 19, 2007.
AFP reports:
PAILIN, Cambodia (AFP) – The murderous Khmer Rouge regime’s most senior surviving leader was arrested Wednesday, plucked from his home in the Cambodian jungle to face justice at the country’s long-delayed genocide trials.
Nuon Chea, now 82 and once the most trusted lieutenant of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, is the first of a small group of former top cadres living freely in Cambodia to be arrested by the new UN-backed tribunal.
An AFP correspondent saw police and court officials take him from his remote home and drive him to a waiting helicopter, which flew him to the capital Phnom Penh to be processed by the fledgling tribunal that will put him on trial.
“He was brought before the office of the co-investigating judges… on execution of an arrest warrant,” tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath told AFP in Phnom Penh.
He said Nuon Chea would be informed of the charges being brought against him, but did not say what those would be.
Nuon Chea, known in the regime’s revolutionary circles as “Brother Number Two”, was allegedly a key architect of the execution policies of the Khmer Rouge, who are blamed for the deaths of up to two million people.
Two million people deserve justice, so let’s keep our fingers crossed that the elderly genocidaire makes it to trial next year.
