Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer dies in Cambodia

Kaing Guek Eav oversaw the torture and killing of as many as 16,000 Cambodians at the Communist regime’s most notorious prison. The 77-year-old known as “Comrade Duch” died at a hospital Wednesday morning after having difficulty breathing at the Kandal provincial prison where he was serving a life sentence for war crimes.

What was his legacy? Duch led Tuol Sleng, a top-secret Khmer Rouge prison inside a former secondary school in Phnom Penh. During a tribunal hearing in 2009, Duch said torturers working for him beat and shocked prisoners with electrical devices but denied any direct involvement. Detainees later were murdered in nearby killing fields and buried in mass graves. The Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million people—a quarter of the country’s population—between 1975 and 1979. Duch fled the region after the regime’s fall and in the 1990s converted to Christianity. In 1999, a British photographer found him working for World Vision under a different name, leading to his arrest.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Marvin Olasky’s report on Duch’s conversion and trial.