POL POT TRIAL
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ELIZABETH VARGAS, ABC News: One of the most heinous dictators of the 20th century, Cambodia's Pol Pot, has been put on trial, convicted, and sentenced by some of his former followers. We get more now from ABC's Mark Mullen.
MARK MULLEN, ABC News: (voice-over) This is the image Westerners and most Cambodians have of Pol Pot, who was last seen publicly on film in the late `70s. This is Pol Pot on Friday, much older and seemingly feeble, in pictures obtained exclusively by ABC News' Nightline through journalist Nate Thayer of the "Far Eastern Economic Review." Pol Pot, the architect of genocide, the leader of the Khmer Rouge regime which killed as many as two million fellow Cambodians, was removed from his jungle hideout and publicly put on trial for his atrocities, or so it was supposed to seem.
NATE THAYER, "Far Eastern Economic Review": I was shocked that the point we arrived, the show trial began, and it was an extremely surreal historic moment.
MARK MULLEN: (voice-over) For two hours, insults were directed at Pol Pot in a public humiliation session. In the end, the man who ordered the torture and killing of so many people was himself sentenced to a lifetime of house arrest.
DITH PRAN, Victim: For me as a victim of the Pol Pot regime, I think this is public relation for the Khmer Rouge.
MARK MULLEN: Many Americans learned of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge through the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories of Sydney Shanberg and his friend, "New York Times" photojournalist Dith Pran.
DITH PRAN: I think the Khmer Rouge prepare the next stage, how to come back, you know, to the power.
MARK MULLEN: (voice-over) Shanberg just returned from Cambodia, where he is researching an article for "Vanity Fair." He doubts Pol Pot will ever see justice in the West.
SYDNEY SHANBERG, "Vanity Fair": They're not turning him over to anybody in the outside world so that we will hear, really, what he did. And there are lots of reasons for that, because if he started talking, he might talk about all of his associates. He might talk about lots of countries who helped him, including the United States.
MARK MULLEN: (voice-over) Shanberg and Pran believe the Khmer Rouge is sacrificing the aging leader to reinvent itself and attempt to share power in a country where politics is often ruled by force.
Mark Mullen, ABC News.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: ABC's Ted Koppel will continue coverage of Pol Pot' s fall on Nightline from the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
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O.J. Simpson will need a new way to get around. Yesterday a Santa Monica judge ordered him to give up a $40,000 sport utility vehicle. It's to help satisfy the $33 million civil judgment against him. Simpson also must hand over a baby grand piano.
And finally, Elizabeth Taylor is back on the charity circuit. The legendary actress was in Istanbul, Turkey, raising money for the children of war-torn Chechnya. It was Taylor's first big trip away from her Los Angeles home since having brain surgery in February.
And she looks great, doesn't she?
SPENCER CHRISTIAN: Yes, she has such...
ELIZABETH VARGAS: It's...
SPENCER CHRISTIAN:... elegance about her. It's -- yes.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: It's really, really remarkable...
SPENCER CHRISTIAN: Good to see her, right.
ELIZABETH VARGAS:... to see her out...
SPENCER CHRISTIAN: Out and about.
ELIZABETH VARGAS:... doing things for a good cause.
SPENCER CHRISTIAN: Yes, yes.
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