UN Tribunal sentences Khmer Rouge leaders

(Vatican Radio) A U.N.-backed tribunal on Thursday sentenced two top leaders of the former Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia to life in prison.

They were jailed for crimes against humanity during the country's 1970s reign of terror that left close to 2 million people dead.

Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s interview with the Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Cambodia, Sr Denise Coghlan.

The historic verdicts were announced against Khieu Samphan, the regime's former head of state, and Nuon Chea, the only two surviving leaders of the regime left to stand trial.

About 1.7 million people died under rule of the Khmer Rouge through a combination starvation, medical neglect, overwork and execution when the group held power between 1975 and 1979.

Speaking about the reaction to the verdicts, the Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Cambodia, Sr Denise Coghlan says , “people were relieved really to hear that the verdict was guilty and that the sentence was life imprisonment…”

She goes on to say that even today decades on from atrocities “there’s still an overwhelming grief inside the hearts of many people, especially the ones who suffered under the Khmer Rouge and lost their relatives.”

Tribunal spokesman Lars Olsen called it ``a historic day for both the Cambodian people and the court. The victims have waited 35 years for legal accountability, and now that the tribunal has rendered a judgment, it is a clear milestone.''