Khmer Rouge co-founder Ieng Sary dies amid trial over atrocities that killed 1.7M Cambodians

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Cambodian police officers stand guard in front of the emergency room at the hospital where former Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary died in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Ieng Sary, who co-founded Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge movement in 1970s, was its public face abroad and decades later became one of its few leaders to be put on trial for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, died Thursday morning. He was 87. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Ieng Sary, who co-founded the communist Khmer Rouge regime responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s, and who decades later became one of its few leaders to be put on trial, died Thursday before his case could be finished. He was 87.

Ieng Sary was the brother-in-law of late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. His death dashed hopes that he would be punished for his alleged crimes against humanity during the darkest chapter in his country's history.

Chea Leang, a co-prosecutor at the Cambodian-international tribunal that had been trying Ieng Sary, said he died of cardiac failure. The trial began in late 2011 with four defendants and now has only two.

Ieng Sary had suffered from high blood pressure and heart problems and had been admitted to a Phnom Penh hospital on March 4 with weakness and severe fatigue. His body was being taken Thursday from the hospital to Malai in western Cambodia, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold where his family lives, for his funeral.

There are fears that the two remaining former Khmer Rouge leaders still on trial, both in their 80s, could also die before justice is served. Ieng Sary's wife, former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, also was charged but was ruled unfit to stand trial last year because she suffers from dementia, probably Alzheimer's disease.

"We are disappointed that we could not complete the proceeding against Ieng Sary," tribunal spokesman Lars Olsen said, adding that the case against chief Khmer Rouge ideologist Nuon Chea and former head of state Khieu Samphan would not be affected.

Ieng Sary founded the Khmer Rouge with Pol Pot. The regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, claimed it was building a pure socialist society by evicting people from cities to work in labour camps in the countryside. Its radical policies led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

"He was a critical part of the senior leadership and his death undoubtedly will have an impact on the case," said Elizabeth Becker, a former New York Times journalist and author of "When the War Was Over," a history of modern Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. "This trial was held 30 years too late."

Ieng Sary was foreign minister in the regime, and as its top diplomat became a much more recognizable figure internationally than his secretive colleagues.

The Khmer Rouge came to power through a civil war that toppled a U.S.-backed government. Ieng Sary then helped persuade hundreds of Cambodian intellectuals to return home from overseas to help the new regime.

The returnees were arrested and put in "re-education camps," and most were later executed, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group gathering evidence of Khmer Rouge crimes for the tribunal.

As a member of the Khmer Rouge's central and standing committee, Ieng Sary "repeatedly and publicly encouraged, and also facilitated, arrests and executions within his Foreign Ministry and throughout Cambodia," Steve Heder said in his co-authored book "Seven Candidates for Prosecution: Accountability for the Crimes of the Khmer Rouge." Heder is a Cambodia scholar who later worked with the U.N.-backed tribunal.

Known by his revolutionary alias, "Comrade Van," Ieng Sary was a recipient of many internal Khmer Rouge documents detailing torture and mass execution of suspected internal enemies, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

"We are continuing to wipe out remaining (internal enemies) gradually, no matter if they are opposed to our revolution overtly or covertly," read a cable sent to Ieng Sary in 1978. It was reprinted in an issue of the centre's magazine in 2000, apparently proving he had full knowledge of bloody purges.

In 1996, years after the overthrown Khmer Rouge retreated to the jungle, Ieng Sary became the first member of its inner circle to surrender, bringing thousands of foot soldiers with him and hastening the movement's final disintegration.

"He liked good food, power, money, nice living, and the idea — mistaken — that communism was the wave of the future," said David Chandler, a Cambodia expert at Australia's Monash University. "He was a wily and able foreign minister. He quit when the quitting was good."

Ieng Sary's surrender secured him a limited amnesty, temporary credibility as a peacemaker and years of comfortable living in Cambodia, but that vanished as the U.N.-backed tribunal built its case against him.

Ieng Sary was arrested in 2007, and the trial against him started in late 2011. He faced charges that included crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

He has denied any hand in the atrocities. At a news conference following his surrender, he said Pol Pot "was the sole and supreme architect of the party's line, strategy and tactics."

"Nuon Chea implemented all Pol Pot's decisions to torture and execute those who expressed opposite opinions and those they hated, like intellectuals," Ieng Sary said. He claimed that he was a secondary figure excluded from Pol Pot's secret security committee, which decided policy and who would be executed.

"Do I have remorse? No," he said in 1996. "I have no regrets because this was not my responsibility."

Only one former Khmer Rouge official has been tried and convicted: former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, who was sentenced to life in prison.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has openly opposed additional indictments of former Khmer Rouge figures, some of whom have become his political allies.

Pol Pot himself died in 1998 in Cambodia's jungles while a prisoner of his own comrades.

Ieng Sary sought to have the tribunal honour the pardon he received from Cambodia's king when he surrendered in 1996. The tribunal, formally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, ruled that the pardon does not cover its indictment against him.

Ieng Sary was born Kim Trang on Oct. 24, 1925, in southern Vietnam. In the early 1950s, he was among many Cambodian students who received government scholarships to study in France, where he also took part in a Marxist circle.

After returning to Cambodia in 1957, he taught history at an elite high school in the capital, Phnom Penh, while engaging in clandestine communist activities.

He, Ieng Thirith, Pol Pot and Pol Pot's wife eventually formed the core of the Khmer Rouge movement. Pol Pot's wife, Khieu Ponnary, also was Ieng Thirith's sister; she died in 2003.

Pol Pot was known as "Brother No. 1", Nuon Chea as "Brother No. 2" and Ieng Sary was "Brother No. 3."

In August 1979, eight months after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge by a Vietnam-led resistance, Ieng Sary was sentenced in absentia to death by the court of a Hanoi-installed government that was made up of former Khmer Rouge defectors such as Hun Sen, the current prime minister. The show trial also condemned Pol Pot.

Since he was in charge of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement's finances, Ieng Sary was believed to have used his position to amass personal wealth.

On Aug. 8, 1996, a Khmer Rouge rebel radio broadcast announced a death sentence against him for embezzling millions of dollars that reportedly came from the group's logging and gem business along the border with Thailand. But the charge appeared to be politically inspired, recognition that he was becoming estranged from his comrades-in-arms.

He struck a peace deal with Hun Sen and days later led a mutiny of thousands of Khmer Rouge fighters to join the government, which was a prelude to the movement's total collapse in 1999.

As a reward, Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia almost unchallenged for the last two decades, secured a royal amnesty for Ieng Sary from then-King Norodom Sihanouk, who himself had been a virtual prisoner of the Khmer Rouge and lost more than a dozen children and relatives during its reign of terror. The government also awarded Ieng Sary a diplomatic passport for travel.

Between his defection and arrest, Ieng Sary lived a comfortable life, dividing time between his opulent villa in Phnom Penh and his home in Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwestern Cambodia.