Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister leaves the court and justice

Former Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister  Ieng Sary died Thursday morning of sickness and at age 87.

Ieng Sary was hospitalized March 4 after suffering a serious stomach problem and was vomiting.

Ieng Sary was a student at Collège Sisowath in Phnom Penh. He received a scholarship to study in France at the Lycée Condorcet and at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, and became a member of the French Communist Party in 1951. He is believed to

have founded the Cercle marxiste des étudiants Khmers à Paris (Marxist Circle of Khmer students in Paris). Returning to Cambodia in 1957, Ieng Sary became a history professor at Collège Sisowath and an active member of the CPK. He allegedly joined the Khmer Rouge in 1963. During the civil war of 1971–5, he participated in the Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea and was the special envoy of the National United Front of Kampuchea.

When the Khmer Rouge took control in 1975, Ieng Sary became Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs. He fled to Thailand when the regime fell in 1979, and was then convicted of genocide and sentenced to death in absentia by the People’s Revolutionary Tribunal of Phnom Penh. He continued to assume his official functions within the government in exile, but transferred his title of Minister of Foreign Affairs to Khieu Samphan after the creation of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea in 1982. Ieng Sary left the Khmer Rouge with thousands of his followers in August 1996 in exchange for King Norodom Sihanouk granting him a royal pardon for his 1979 conviction and royal amnesty from prosecution under a 1994 law outlawing the Khmer Rouge.

–       AliasVan

–       Date of BirthOctober 24, 1925

–       Place of Birth Loeung Va village in Tra Vinh Province (now part of southern Vietnam)

–       Arrested Date November 12 2007

–       Defence counsel Ang Udom (Cambodia) & Michael G. Karnavas (USA)

Position in Democratic Kampuchea Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs. Member of the Standing Committee and Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Status of case Indicted and sent to trial for crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and genocide; offences which are defined and punishable under Articles 4,5, 6, 29 (New) and 39 (New) of the Law on the Establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers as amended 27 October 2004. The case is currently on trial. The initial hearing in the trial was held 27-30 June 2011, and the substantive part of the trial commenced with opening statements on 21 November 2011. Ieng Sary is alleged to be responsible, through his acts or omissions (committed via a joint criminal enterprise), for having planned, instigated, ordered, or aided and abetted, or being responsible by virtue of superior responsibility, for the following crimes committed between 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979:

–       Crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation imprisonment, torture, persecution on political, racial, and religious grounds and other inhumane acts)

–       Genocide, by killing members of the groups of Vietnamese and Cham

–       Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (wilful killing, torture or inhumane treatment, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or civilian the rights of fair and regular trial, unlawful deportation or unlawful confinement of a civilian)