Four top surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime were indicted today by a U.N.-backed tribunal. They are, from left, Nuon Chea, 84, the group's ideologist; former head of state, Khieu Samphan, 79; former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary; and his wife, Ieng Thirith, ex-minister for social affairs, both in their 80s. (Photo: AP)Mike Eckel
AOL News
AOL News PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Sept. 16) -- A United Nations-backed tribunal today indicted four senior Khmer Rouge officials, setting up the most important legal reckoning yet with the radical communist movement whose utopian agricultural policies led to the deaths of as much as one-quarter of Cambodia's population in the late 1970s.
The court, formally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, accused Nuon Chea, the top deputy to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, of crimes against humanity, genocide and other charges. Also indicted were Khieu Samphan, who was head of state from 1976 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge's foreign minister, Ieng Sary, and his wife, Ieng Thirith, the regime's minister for social welfare.
When the former Khmer Rouge leaders formally answer those charges in the courtroom next year, they won't be the only ones facing a trial. So too will the court itself, which has been fiercely criticized for its slow progress, leading only to a single previous trial.
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