Phnom Penh:
Prosecutors on Tuesday gave harrowing details of the torture and execution of thousands of Cambodians as they laid their case against the Khmer Rouge regime's prison chief for the first time.
Inmates at the notorious jail run by Duch had their nails pulled out and their electrodes attached to their genitals, while some were subjected to live autopsies or had the blood drained from them until they died, they said.
Only a handful of people are known to have survived their time at Tuol Sleng prison, which is now a genocide museum lined with photographs of some of the more than 15,000 men, women and children who died there in the 1970s.
Prosecutors at Cambodia's long-delayed UN-backed tribunal said Duch -- a former maths teacher also known as Kaing Guek Eav -- played a central role as chief of the security apparatus for the 1975-1979 regime.
"For 30 years, a whole generation of Cambodians have been struggling to get answers about their families' fates," Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang told the court, as Duch jotted notes in the dock.
"Today in this courtroom before the Cambodian people and the world, at long last this process begins and justice will be done."
Inmates at the notorious jail run by Duch had their nails pulled out and their electrodes attached to their genitals, while some were subjected to live autopsies or had the blood drained from them until they died, they said.
Only a handful of people are known to have survived their time at Tuol Sleng prison, which is now a genocide museum lined with photographs of some of the more than 15,000 men, women and children who died there in the 1970s.
Prosecutors at Cambodia's long-delayed UN-backed tribunal said Duch -- a former maths teacher also known as Kaing Guek Eav -- played a central role as chief of the security apparatus for the 1975-1979 regime.
"For 30 years, a whole generation of Cambodians have been struggling to get answers about their families' fates," Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang told the court, as Duch jotted notes in the dock.
"Today in this courtroom before the Cambodian people and the world, at long last this process begins and justice will be done."
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