Torturer compares himself to St. Paul
BANGKOK, Thailand - Cambodians know him as the cruelest of the Khmer Rouge torturers, the author of such directives as "Use the hot method, even if it kills him" and, in the margin of a list of 17 children, "Kill them all."
In his own mind, he is St. Paul, a persecutor who renounced his past and became a Christian evangelist.
Kang Kek Ieu, better known by his revolutionary nickname, Duch, was the head of the Khmer Rouge secret police and the commandant of Tuol Sleng prison, where at least 14,000 people were tortured and killed. In the 20 years since the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power, he converted to Christianity and devoted himself to spreading the Gospel and to helping refugees who fled the brutality of his regime. "I think my biography is something like Paul's," he told Nate Thayer, an American reporter who recounted his strange story in an article last week in the Far Eastern Economic Review. "I feel very sorry about the killings and the past," said Duch (pronounced Dook), who is now 56 and had been living quietly and anonymously in western Cambodia. "I wanted to be a good communist. Now in the second half of my life, I want to serve God by doing God's work to help people." But he sought to make it clear that he had not tortured and killed for the fun of it. Indeed, he portrayed himself as a harried bureaucrat, constantly concerned about the quality of his product. "I did not get any pleasure about my work," he assured Thayer, speaking in broken English and in French. "All the confessions of my prisoners - I worried, is that true or not?" Almost as extraordinary as his personal story is the fact that, for the past two years, Cambodian authorities have known where he is, according to Thayer, and have made no move to arrest him. A senior Cambodian Justice official said Thursday that even now that Duch's whereabouts have been revealed, there are still no plans to put him in custody, as a defendant or a witness against other leaders. "I have no plan to summon him to Phnom Penh as a witness in Ta Mok's case," said Ngin Sam An, the investigating judge in the case of the only Khmer Rouge official to have been arrested, the commander Ta Mok. "There are also no plans yet to charge him separately with crimes." Youk Chhang, a researcher who has prepared evidence against Khmer Rouge leaders at the Documentation Center of Cambodia, called Duch a "very essential" witness against the people who are responsible for the deaths of more than a million people when they held power from 1975 to 1979. "He is the key to the conviction of Khmer Rouge leaders. His testimony can show that they were aware of what was happening," Youk Chhang said. Prime Minister Hun Sen has resisted international demands that other Khmer Rouge leaders be arrested, saying he fears this could cause a violent reaction among their followers, who now live in semiautonomous areas in the north and west of the country. Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea are prominent among these leaders. The two men surrendered last December and were given a guided tour of the country before returning to the security of the remote Khmer Rouge- controlled town of Pailin. In the interview, Duch implicated both men, as well as Ta Mok, as leaders who ordered the torture and killings he carried out at the prison known as S-21. "The first was Pol Pot," he said, naming the Khmer Rouge leader who died a year ago. "The second was Nuon Chea, the third Ta Mok." He added: "Khieu Samphan knew of the killings, but less than the others." The overriding rule at Tuol Sleng, Thayer quoted Duch, was a simple one: "Whoever was arrested must die." When a Vietnamese invasion drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, Duch fled with other Khmer Rouge leaders into the jungles. According to his own account he left the movement in 1992 and became a teacher. Then, under assumed names, he worked until a few months ago with United Nations and private relief organizations. It was at that time that he converted to Christianity, he said. "After my experience in life I decided I must give my spirit to God," he said. Duch, whose thin face, large teeth and prominent ears made him one of the more recognizable faces in photographs of the Khmer Rouge, said he was fully prepared to face trial. "I have done very bad things in my life," he said, the first Khmer Rouge leader to make that admission. "Now it is time to bear the consequences of my actions."