Khmer Rouge leaders deny role in Cambodian atrocities

PAILIN (AFP) - Defiant to the end, former Khmer Rouge leaders have shrugged off the threat of jail as Cambodia moves toward holding genocide trials, saying they had no hand in the mass deaths that occurred here in the late 1970s.

"I was not involved in the killing of people," the regime's most senior surviving leader, Nuon Chea, told AFP at his modest wooden home in northwest Cambodia, where he has lived since defecting to the government in 1998.

He said he "felt no differently" after prosecutors filed cases against five people earlier this week at a special UN-backed court to try former Khmer Rouge leaders. The names of the five have not been made public.

"I don't know who was responsible" for the deaths, he said, but added that he was sure he was among the people to be investigated.

"I know I'm included because the five suspects are high-ranking leaders," he said.

"I'm ready to explain myself to the court when it summons me."

Nearly 30 years after the Khmer Rouge were pushed from power and following a decade of contentious negotiations, Cambodia appears poised to finally seek justice for the crimes committed during the regime's 1975-79 rule.

Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed under the communist Khmer Rouge, which abolished religion, schools and currency, exiling millions to vast collective farms with the aim of creating an agrarian utopia.

These crimes were part of a "common criminal plan constituting a systematic and unlawful denial of basic rights," prosecutors said in a statement.

"Those responsible for these crimes and policies included senior leaders" of the regime, they added after submitting more than 14,000 pages of documents as evidence.

"I know what I did," said Khieu Samphan, a French-educated intellectual who as head of state was the face of the Khmer Rouge to the outside world, dismissing accusations that he had knowledge of the atrocities.

"Since the court has not convicted me, it means that I am not guilty," he told AFP from his home in Pailin -- an isolated gem-mining town which was one of the last Khmer Rouge strongholds.

The Khmer Rouge tribunal has been underway for a year, but Wednesday's case submissions were the most significant step taken yet toward actually bringing defendants to the dock.

The cases have to be reviewed by co-investigating judges -- one Cambodian and one foreign -- who will then recommend whether suspects can be tried.

But Nuon Chea said he doubted the court's ability to hold fair trials because he did not trust its foreign judges.

The trials are to be held under a complex power-sharing arrangement between foreign and Cambodian jurists that is meant to keep either side from exerting undue influence amid concerns of political influence and judicial incompetence.

"I believe in the Cambodian judges. ... But the foreign judges do not understand Democratic Kampuchea well," Nuon Chea said, using the revolutionary name given to Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge.

"Will I receive justice or not, I don't know ... the facts are with the Cambodian people and I believe they will find justice for me," he said from his home, just outside Pailin.

Trials are expected next year in what many see as the last chance for Cambodians to get justice for crimes committed by the regime.

So far only one possible defendant is in custody -- former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kang Kek Ieu, also known as Duch.

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and rights groups and legal advocates are concerned that other ageing figures from the regime will also die before being brought to court.

"I will not die before the trial," Nuon Chea vowed, although he added: "I am really sick and my health is deteriorating."