Kaing Guek Eav, the former schoolteacher known as Duch who became the most notorious killer during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror in Cambodia in the 1970s, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He was admitted to Khmer Soviet Friendship on Tuesday, and his death was announced by Neth Pheaktra, spokesman for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh. Duch was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2010 for atrocities he had committed as a commandant of the Tuol Sleng prison. Duch (pronounced doik) and Tuol Sleng prison became a symbol of the brutality of the Khmer Rouge as it devoured itself in paranoia and purges. Under the regime, from 1975 to 1979, at least 1.7 million people died from execution, torture, starvation, untreated disease or overwork.

Source: New York Times September 02, 2020 01:06 UTC