Ex-Khmer Rouge medic testifies in Cambodia trial

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A former medic at the most notorious Khmer Rouge prison in Cambodia told a genocide tribunal he treated people with missing fingernails and toenails, saying Monday that hundreds of prisoners died from torture wounds.

Sek Dorn, 48, testified at the trial of Kaing Guek Eav — better known as Duch — who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh. Up to 16,000 people were tortured under Duch's command and later were taken away to be killed during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 rule. Only a handful survived.

"There were many prisoners who were wounded and died. There were probably hundreds," Sek Dorn said.

He told the court he was assigned to distribute medicine and clean wounds of the detainees for a year, along with three other medics who were also in their teens.

"The majority of them had wounds and sores on their bodies, especially on their backs and their heads. Some of their fingernails and toenails were missing," he said. "They were wounded by torture."



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[grantcart]

1. This is an interesting case

Duch appears to have had a sincere conversion to Christianity and may be the first defendent of charges of mass genocide to openly admit to his crimes.

[David__77]

2. I do wonder what his views of this were at the time.

Obviously he was a cadre of the movement. It's also pretty likely that were he to say something, he would have been killed. He couldn't have "resigned." In that sense, there was a more dangerous atmosphere for disgruntled KR cadres than, say, for disgruntled National Socialists in Germany under Hitler. That is a true crime of an self-styled revolutionary movement.