Couple Formerly in Top Khmer Ranks Arrested Accused of Crimes Against Humanity

By Thomas Fuller

Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, a husband-and-wife team of French- educated communist revolutionaries who went on to take leading positions in the 1970s Khmer Rouge government, were arrested in Phnom Penh on Monday and charged with crimes against humanity.

Ieng Sary, a onetime history and geography teacher who became the Khmer Rouge foreign minister and deputy prime minister, was additionally charged with war crimes.

The couple were arrested from their Phnom Penh home, where they have lived for the past decade under an amnesty agreement in 1996 for Ieng Sary that may complicate his prosecution.

With the arrests Monday, the special court created to bring justice to the Khmer Rouge leadership that caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians has charged and detained a total of four people and is expected to arrest a fifth and last former leader soon.

After a decade of preparation and delay the first trials against the aging former leaders are likely to begin next year, said Helen Jarvis, a spokeswoman for the court, which was created with assistance from the United Nations.

During the reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1978, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, who was the social affairs minister, were among the closest associates of Pol Pot, the movement’s leader.

Khieu Ponnary, Ieng Thirith’s sister, was married to Pol Pot, and all four studied together in Paris during the 1950s.

Pol Pot died a free man in 1998.

According to court documents obtained by The Associated Press, Ieng Thirith is accused of involvement in the “planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges” as well as the “unlawful killing or murder of staff members from within the Ministry of Social Affairs.”

The specific charges against Ieng Sary are not yet public but scholars say he had knowledge of massacres carried out by the government, pointing to telegrams that he received from officers in the field.

One Khmer Rouge telegram sent to him and other leaders on April 10, 1978, referred to the problem of “internal enemies.”

“We are continuing to wipe out the remaining elements,” the telegram said. “They were against our revolution both openly and secretly.”

Another telegram sent on April 21, 1978, said “internal traitors have been swept out cleanly and interrogated.”

The documents have been compiled by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent research organization.

Testimonies by survivors say Ieng Sary persuaded diplomats, students and other Cambodians living abroad to return home; many of them were subsequently killed.

Ieng Sary has consistently denied any involvement in any killings.

“Pol Pot made all decisions on all matters by himself,” Ieng Sary said in a statement when he surrendered to the government in 1996 as part of an amnesty deal. Pol Pot, he added, “killed people without careful consideration.”

Ieng Sary’s surrender was welcomed by the government because it effectively brought about the end to the Khmer Rouge as a fighting force, although some holdouts at the time, including Pol Pot, remained in the jungles of northwest Cambodia.

Ieng Sary received a royal pardon, rescinding the death sentence that had been handed down in absentia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge to Vietnamese-backed forces.

Ieng Sary’s pardon covered genocide. Judges will presumably weigh its relevance against the current charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Already detained by the UN-backed tribunal are Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who was head of the Khmer Rouge Security Prison 21, where thousands of people were tortured and killed; and Nuon Chea, the head of ideology for the Khmer Rouge.

The trials will be heard by a panel of three Cambodian and two foreign judges.

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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