Nuon Chea, “Brother Number Two” of the Khmer Rouge regime, was arrested yesterday in his home in northeastern Cambodia. Cambodian special forces officers surrounded the 82-year old's home and served him with arrest warrants before he was taken to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia – the headquarters of the special tribunal there to examine alleged war crimes of the Khmer Rouge. It is estimated that 1.7 million people had died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge during an extreme Marxist restructuring campaign in the late 1970's.
The Khmer Rouge, led by its president Pol Pot, led Cambodia from 1975 – 1979 following the conflict spiral from U.S. operations in neighboring Vietnam. They sought to establish a “new people” through isolation and the creation of a classless agrarian utopia. Khmer Rouge leaders developed “killing fields” where the ultra-communist regime practiced a quasi-eugenics campaign through forced labor and extermination of Cambodian elites.
The Khmer Rouge Tribunal was introduced through a 1999 bill sponsored by the U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan. The tribunal is a hybrid system where Cambodian judges hold the majority say in major developments and operates according to the Cambodian system of justice. Cambodian judges, however, need one consenting vote from foreign participants for most decisions to hold. The tribunal nearly dissolved recently as the independence and aptitude of Cambodian legal professions was questioned.
Nuon Chea, who was considered Pol Pot's right-hand man, has denied responsibility for the atrocities in Cambodia. He said in a an interview with the Associated Press recently that he would be ready to face questioning, stating; “I was president of the National Assembly and had nothing to do with the operation of the government.”
Prosecutors for the tribunal have indicated several top Khmer Rouge leaders are under investigation. Though the court has not officially released their names, it is believed that they are the former President, Khieu Samphan, former Foreign Minister leng Sary, and Meas Muth, the son in-law of a major military chief. The chief executioner for the Khmer Rouge, Kang Kek Ieu, a/k/a “Duch”, was arrested earlier this year. Pol Pot and other major Khmer Rouge leaders died before the tribunal was fully developed.
