The tribunal for the administrator of the notorious Cambodian S21 prison facility, Kaing Guek Eav, or Duch, began Monday following years of delays.
The court outlined its charges before Duch Monday, saying the prison chief supervised the execution of some 15,000 people during a quasi-eugenics campaign led by the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s.
The clerk said Duch was the overseer of the S21 facility, enforcing its general rules for security at the former school.
“In addition to executing prisoners condemned in advance as traitors, an overriding purpose of S21 was to extract confessions from prisoners in order to uncover further networks as possible traitors,” the clerk said.
Duch, now a Christian, is thought to be planning an apology later in the week.
“It’s certain that he will use the opportunity given to him to speak to the judges, to the victims and, beyond that, with the Cambodian population,” Duch’s French lawyer Francois Roux told AFP.
Five senior members of the Khmer Rouge were arrested in 2007 and charged with a variety of atrocities, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. It’s estimated than nearly 2 million people died during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in their effort to form an ultra-communist agrarian utopia through forced labor camps.