PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A war crimes tribunal convicted and sentenced the Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer Monday for overseeing the deaths of up to 16,000 people, in the first verdict involving a senior member of the “killing fields” regime that devastated a generation of Cambodians.
In the four years that the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, it was responsible for one of the worst mass killings of the 20th Century
The brutal regime, in power from 1975-1979, claimed the lives of up to two million people.
Under the Marxist leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge tried to take Cambodia back to the Middle [...]
In early 1999, in a village in northwest Cambodia, an elderly man introduced himself to a journalist.
He was Hong Pen, he said, a former teacher from the capital, Phnom Penh. He spoke good English and was wearing the T-shirt of an American aid organisation.
