Duch slouches in his chair, his watery eyes keenly absorbing the next question from the defence. He faces the chamber made up of three judges; the joint prosecutorial team; civil parties; the defence team and security guards. He thanks the presiding judge after each question.
We are at the Extraordinary Chambers of the Cambodian Court (ECCC) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. A hybrid United Nations-Cambodia court established in 2003 with a mandate to try serious crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. This is just the second case brought to trial.
You wouldn't find Tuol Sleng (or S21) if you didn't know where to look. The genocide museum is embedded in the inner suburbs of Phnom Penh, an innocuous, decrepit school building. We saw photos of Duch as we wandered numb with horror through the archives of Khmer suspects who were interrogated and tortured at S21, then driven to Cheoung Ek on the outskirts of Phnom Penh and slaughtered.
It is not Duch's trial. Sentenced for life in an earlier trial, and on appeal, he is appearing as a witness in this trial of three former leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia between 1975–1979: Nuon Chea, aged 84; Khieu Samphan, aged 79; and Ieng Sary, aged 85. Behind the row of defence lawyers three bald, bowed heads are just visible from the public gallery.
The photos of Duch at S21 are from the period; in one he stands tall among a small group of staff in the early days of the prison. In another, he sits at his desk, pen raised, white teeth flashing in the grey scale image.
In the courtroom, Duch continues to carefully respond to the questions of the American defence lawyer for Nuon Chea. It is his seventh day on the witness stand, having spent the previous six days being examined by the prosecution. The proceedings ramble along, stumbling over procedure and the challenges of a complex case of allegations of war crimes and genocide committed over three decades ago, in Khmer, French and English.
A school before 1975, S21 became the central interrogation and torture point for enemies suspected of undermining the revolution. The genocide museum documents the extensive use of torture to solicit confessions from prisoners. As head of S21, Duch was responsible for ensuring that these confessions, at times running to hundreds of pages, satisfied the requirements of his political masters.
A teacher before the revolution, Duch made