Beyond the Mekong

Pol Pot’s Surviving Lieutenants Held to Account

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Beyond the Mekong

Pol Pot’s Surviving Lieutenants Held to Account

The Diplomat chats with senior figures from the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia.

Pol Pot’s Surviving Lieutenants Held to Account
Credit: Henning Blatt via Wikimedia Commons

The Diplomat chats with senior figures from the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia, which has scored some success in prosecuting surviving leaders of the ultra-Maoist regime.

Efforts to put senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge has heralded some success, securing three convictions against the regime’s former head of state Khieu Samphan, Brother Number Two Nuon Chea and the commandant of the S21 Death camp Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch.

Additional charges of genocide are currently being contested and investigations broadened to include culprits from further down Pol Pot’s chain of command who contributed to the deaths of about two million people between 1975 and 1979.

This has silenced some of the tribunals many critics.

In this week’s podcast, Luke Hunt speaks to co-prosecutor, Will Smith, and Lars Olsen, the chief media spokesman for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) about the unique formulae for the United Nations backed war crimes trial, its success, and its problems.