A former security guard at the Khmer Rouge's most notorious prison told a tribunal today he saw a western prisoner burned alive.
Cheam Soeu, now 52, told the court at the trial of the prison's former director, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, how as a youth he joined the Khmer Rouge. He spent two years as a guard at the notorious S21 prison, where four westerners were among the prisoners – an American, an Australian, a New Zealander and a Briton, who were captured on their yacht while sailing in Cambodian waters.
Cheam Soeu told the extraordinary chambers of the courts of Cambodia, the official name of the UN-backed tribunal, he was on guard outside the prison late one evening and watched as one of the four – he said he did not know which – was led by three security guards to the street.
"The prisoner was still alive. They asked him to sit down and they put a car tyre over his body," he testified. He said guards then set him on fire. "I saw the charred torso of the body and black burned legs." Cheam Soeu said he constantly feared that if he did something wrong he would face the same fate. But Duch, the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face trial at the tribunal, denied the story.
"It's hard for me to believe that the prisoner was burned alive. I believe that nobody would dare to violate my order," he told the court. "They had to be killed and then burned to ash."
Up to 16,000 people were tortured under Duch's command at S21 prison and later taken away to be killed during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule in Cambodia. Only a handful survived. On Monday, a former medic at the prison told the tribunal he treated people with missing fingernails and toenails, adding that hundreds of prisoners died from torture wounds. Sek Dorn, 48, said: "Many prisoners … were wounded and died."
He told the court he was assigned to distribute medicine and the clean wounds of the detainees for a year, along with three other medics who were also in their teens. He said he did not personally witness the torture, but saw the effects during medical treatment. "I did not dare ask them in detail," the former medic said. "I was afraid that I would be seen by the guards and I would be killed."
Some 1.7 million Cambodians died of torture, summary executions, disease and starvation during the Khmer Rouge's rule, during which the Maoist ideologues emptied cities and forced virtually the entire population to work on farm collectives.
Duch testified previously that he carried out orders from the regime's late leader, Pol Pot, to kill the four westerners and then burn their corpses. Prison records suggest there may have been as many as 11 western prisoners.
Duch, 66, is the only senior Khmer Rouge figure to admit responsibility for his actions. He is charged with crimes against humanity and is the first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials.