KR brother #2 asks court to free him as he has no guilty
Chhay Sophal
Cambodia News
Phnom Penh (31 October, 2103): Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge Brother Number 2 from Pol Pot on Thursday urged the court to free him from custody as he is not guilty for some 1.7 million people who died of execution, starvation, overwork, and disease during 1975-79 although he say sorry for the victims and their families.
Speaking to the court room, Nuon Chea said that as the Vice Chairman of Communist Party of Kampuchea and the National Assembly President of the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) on 1975-79, he educated the members to respect, to love, and to serve the people and nation and that he never told anyone to kill, to starve and to make genocide for his own people.
During his last words provided by the court before the judges’ decision, Nuon Chea said that as the National Assembly President, he was powerless in the government and everything was depending on Pol Pot ‘s decision because no one could replace Pol Pot.
Nuon Chea said that he never involved with the S21 Torture Center or Tuol Sleng Prison where some 16,000 were killed and that he never heard the name of prison chief Duch until 1979.
It is unjust for me and please don to take “the crocodile’ head to judge but leave the body and tail behind”.” he said
I never had any plan to support and encourage anyone to commit crime and I did not know the crime happened at the grassroots until the end of the Democratic Kampuchea regime,” he affirmed.
Nuon Chea said that the mistake of the DK regime was to choose the wrong regional leaders and cadres who betrayed the regime and the Cambodian Communist Party while the top leaders were busy in Phnom Penh and rarely went to the grassroots but relying on the lying reports from the regional leaders and cadres who were the Vietnamese and American agents.
For morality, he said, he has to take responsible for the nation and people who suffered during the DK regime and that “I would like to publicly sorry for the people and the whole Cambodia” for the tragedy.