Associated Press
Wednesday September 19, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Police in Cambodia today arrested the most senior surviving Khmer Rouge leader and took him to Phnom Penh to face genocide charges at a UN tribunal.
Nuon Chea was second only to the regime's leader, Pol Pot, and is known in the country as "brother number two".
He is accused of responsibility for the atrocities of the "killing fields", in which an estimated 1.7 million people died in the 1970s through hunger, illnesses, overwork and execution.
Police surrounded his home in Pailin, in north-western Cambodia, near the Thai border, and served him with an arrest warrant on charges of crimes against humanity, a police spokesman said.
Officers later took the 82-year-old, who denies any wrongdoing, into custody, putting him into a car and then a helicopter bound for the capital as his son and dozens of other people looked on, witnesses said.
"My father is happy to shed light on the Khmer Rouge regime for the world and people to understand," Nuon Say said afterward.
Nuon Say said his mother had fainted after seeing her husband taken away by police.
A convoy transported Nuon Chea from a military airport in the capital to the offices of the tribunal, officially known as the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia.
"An initial appearance will be held today during which he will informed of the charges which have been brought against him," the tribunal said in a statement.
Nuon Chea helped Pol Pot seize control of Cambodia's underground communist movement in the 1950s and 60s.
Prosecutors for the UN-backed genocide tribunal have said there are five senior Khmer Rouge figures they have recommended for trial.
Kaing Guek Eav, commonly known as Duch, who headed the former Khmer Rouge S-21 prison, was the first suspect detained by the tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity. He was charged last month. The other suspects have not been publicly named.
A tribunal spokesman, Reach Sambath, said investigating judges were expected to question Nuon Chea later today.
The tribunal was created last year after seven years of contentious negotiations between the UN and Cambodia.
Critics had warned that Nuon Chea and the other former Khmer Rouge leaders could die before ever seeing a courtroom.
Cambodian police arrest Pol Pot deputy
Cambodian police arrest Pol Pot deputy
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