Nate Thayer

Pol Pot `suicide' to avoid US trial

Pol Pot `suicide' to avoid US trial

The Independent (London, England)

January 21, 1999 | Teresa Poole in Peking

POL POT committed suicide last year after learning his Khmer Rouge rivals had offered to hand him over for trial on genocide charges, a Hong Kong magazine said.

But the US turned down the chance three weeks earlier to take the former Khmer Rouge leader into custody, because it had not prepared a legal basis on which to arrest and try him.

The former Cambodian leader, blamed for the deaths of 1 million of his countrymen, is said by the Far Eastern Economic Review to have taken an overdose of tranquillisers and anti-malarial pills at a Khmer Rouge stronghold on the Thai border. He died on 15 April 1998, aged 73. His associates said he died of a heart attack but within days Thai intelligence sources said it was poison and that it "got into his body with his consent", according to a Reuters report at the time. No autopsy was done before the body was cremated and until now no one had come up with a detailed scenario of the circumstances surrounding the death. Before the cremation the Thai army took samples of hair, skin and fingerprints. Yesterday's Far Eastern Economic Review article was by Nate Thayer, who has consistently scooped the world on Khmer Rouge reports. According to what he says are impeccable sources, Ta Mok, the one-legged rival Khmer Rouge military commander who captured the ailing Pol Pot and his entourage in 1997, offered to hand him over to the US for trial just before his death. Mr Thayer said that on 25 March 1998 "the Khmer Rouge made a decision and contacted the Americans to turn him over but the Americans turned them down. They had no legal basis to arrest and detain him". The Review said Washington scrambled to establish grounds for an arrest and to find a country where a trial could take place for the carnage during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule, but "Brother Number One" was dead before preparations were complete. He had discovered Ta Mok's plan when listening to a Voice of America radio broadcast, and killed himself, said Mr Thayer. "Pol Pot died of a lethal dose of a combination of Valium and chloroquine." In the days before the suicide US officials had been consulting Thailand and other countries about capturing him but did not itself plan such a move, according to reports at the time. However, Pol Pot presumably knew he was likely to be captured or handed over to face genocide charges. The question of an international tribunal to try former Khmer Rouge leaders is very much a live issue at the moment following the surrender last month of two Pol Pot henchmen, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea. Since they gave themselves up they have been given a VIP tour of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, and appeared at a press conference at which they said they were sorry for their roles in the deaths under the Khmer Rouge. "Let bygones be bygones," said Khieu Samphan. The Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen, at first hinted that a trial of the two men might not be in the interests of national reconciliation but recently said he supported legal action against the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders.

The most evil man in the world is dead: The Independent (London, England)

The most evil man in the world is dead

The Independent (London, England)

April 17, 1998 | Stephen Vines in Hong Kong

POL POT, the Cambodian dictator whose name is synonymous with genocide, is dead. The man responsible for the killing, torture and starvation of over one million of his people, died peacefully following a heart attack.

There was confusion at first over whether reports of his death were true. But it now seems clear that he died late on Wednesday in a Cambodian village two miles from the border with Thailand. His body was shown to a group of journalists yesterday. They included the American reporter Nate Thayer, who has interviewed Pol Pot twice recently and is convinced that the dead man is the former dictator.

After causing havoc in his lifetime by plunging Cambodia into one of the most disastrous experiments in social engineering the world has seen, his death at the age of 76 was prosaic. Dressed in baggy grey trousers and an off-white, short-sleeved cotton shirt his body was laid out in a simple hut reeking of formaldehyde. Teenage Khmer Rouge soldiers, who resembled those who carried him to power for four bloody years, starting in 1975, guarded the body. Before he died, they had been his captors. According to reports earlier in the week the rump of the Khmer Rouge had been planning to turn him over for international trial in a last attempt to save their own skins from advancing Cambodian government forces. Pol Pot died deserted by his erstwhile comrades-in-arms in their last stronghold. Having inspired terror in Cambodia, he had become an entirely marginal figure. As if to emphasise the isolation facing the Khmer Rouge, the only sound to be heard while Pol Pot lay at rest was the rumble of fighting between Khmer Rouge and government troops. There is no suggestion of foul play in Pol Pot's death. Since he was arrested by his own troops last year he has been ill. The Cambodian government spokesman, Khieu Kahnarith, said the state wanted to conduct a medical investigation but thought it unlikely that the former dictator had been killed. Non Nou, the Khmer Rouge commander responsible for Pol Pot's security, said: "If they are afraid the body was tampered with, ask his wife. She was there". It is unlikely that there will be much mourning for Pol Pot. Cambodia's King, Norodom Sihanouk, who twice allied himself with the Khmer Rouge, recently called him "one of the most horrible monsters ever created". Known as "Brother Number One"' during the years of his rule, Pol Pot may have been responsible for the deaths of one-fifth of Cambodia's population. Researchers believe as many as 1.7 million people died as a result of executions, torture and mass starvation. Pol Pot received his higher education in France and acquired a reputation there as an amiable, fun-loving student. It was in France that he also became acquainted with Marxism and back in his homeland he built up the revolutionary movement which overthrew Lon Nol's regime in 1975. The movement he helped to create is now largely decimated. It helped create the current government led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander who is also no stranger to using violence for political ends.

Scoop of a lifetime: a Pol Pot interview

Scoop of a lifetime: a Pol Pot interview

The Independent (London, England)

July 28, 1997 | Matthew Chance Bangkok

The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Pol Pot may finally be over. An American journalist yesterday announced he had travelled to the Khmer Rouge's remote stronghold in northern Cambodia and had met - and filmed - Pol Pot himself, a figure not glimpsed by the outside world for past 18 years.

If his story is true, Nate Thayer is the first reporter to have met Cambodia's murderous former dictator since a Japanese television crew in 1979. That was shortly after the collapse of his genocidal regime in which about two million Cambodians were killed.

"I did see Pol Pot in Anlong Veng," said Mr Thayer, of the Far Eastern Economic Review. But that was all he would divulge. The world will have to wait for details of the thoughts, health and plans of one of this century's most hated figures. Now, writing in his Bangkok hotel room and refusing to take calls, Mr Thayer is proving elusive. A statement from Dow Jones and Co, which owns the Review, said the story will be published in the next edition of the magazine on Thursday. But television pictures of the historic encounter, shot by an accompanying cameraman, David McKaige, could be seen before then, as soon as deals with networks are finalised. The decision to allow a reporter to walk out of Anlong Veng alive is in itself astonishing; the Khmer Rouge were infamous for kidnapping and eliminating Westerners who strayed into their territory. It may be a sign that the movement is now willing to appease international curiosity, and even to hand over Pol Pot for trial for genocide, in exchange for a chance to return to mainstream politics. For Mr Thayer, a Cambodia specialist, it was "the end of a long journey, full of dangers", he told friends. Voja Miladinovic, a photographer who has been stalking Pol Pot for 14 years, said: "Apart from the almost immediate recognition . . . he's also about to get very rich. He stands certain to make hundreds of thousands of pounds, perhaps even millions."