Nuon Chea

The ratification of the pact, which took almost six years to thrash out, opens the way for the United Nations to raise the $50 million it estimates will be needed for the tribunal, which will include foreign judges and prosecutors.

None of the leaders of a regime that emptied cities, tried to weed out the educated and execute them, and killed people through starvation and overwork has faced the courts.

The surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, who imposed their radical rule in 1975 and were ousted after a Vietnamese invasion expelled them from Phnom Penh in January 1979, are in their 60s and 70s.

The architect of the regime, Brother No. 1 Pol Pot, died in 1998. Other leaders, including Brother No. 2 Nuon Chea, then head of state Khieu Samphan and Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, are free.

Only two top members of the regime await trial -- military chief Ta Mok and Duch, the head of the notorious Tuol Sleng interrogation center, a former school from which very few emerged alive.

The Japan Times Weekly: Oct. 9, 2004
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