Khmer Rouge cadres slit prisoners’ throats and ate their gall bladders, witness tells genocide trial
UN-backed Cambodian court told soldiers would eat the organs of executed prisoners after drying them in the sun, by witness who watched hundreds die
A witness told Cambodia’s UN-backed court on Wednesday Khmer Rouge soldiers slit prisoners’ throats and ate their gall bladders during the 1970s, as the genocide trial of the two most senior surviving leaders resumed.
Nuon Chea, 88, known as ‘Brother Number Two’, and former head of state Khieu Samphan, 83, face charges over the killing of ethnic Vietnamese and Muslim minorities, forced marriage and rape during the 1975-1979 regime that left up to two million people dead.
In August the pair were given life sentences for crimes against humanity – the first top Khmer Rouge figures to be jailed – after a two-year trial focused on the forced evacuation of Cambodians from Phnom Penh into rural labour camps and murders at one execution site.
The genocide trial, which began last July, has faced repeated delays due to boycotts by the defendants’ lawyers and most recently because of the brief hospitalisation of Khieu Samphan.
