Cambodia's war crimes tribunal is to hear the appeal of former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav in March after the jailer became the first defendant convicted by the court in July, according to dpa. Court spokesman Reach Sambath said the appeal hearings would begin in the last week of March and were expected to be open to the public. Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his revolutionary name Duch, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. With credit for time already served, the 68-year-old stands to spend roughly 18 more years in detention. During the 1975-1979 reign of the Khmer Rouge, Duch presided over the S-21 prison camp in Phnom Penh, a facility in which nearly all of its estimated 14,000 prisoners were eventually executed. He has appealed his sentence, arguing that he falls outside the tribunal's mandate to investigate "senior leaders" and those "most responsible" for Khmer Rouge crimes. Prosecutors have also appealed, branding Duch's sentence "manifestly inadequate" and calling for a 45-year term to be imposed. They declined to seek a life term because of Duch's excessive pre-trial detention. The tribunal's second case, which features four senior Khmer Rouge leaders who have been indicted for genocide was also expected to begin in the first half of next year although no date has been set. The movement's leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998, before he could be tried. The Maoist Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities, advocating a rural, agrarian society, and are thought to be responsible for the deaths of perhaps 2.2 million people during their four-year reign of terror, mainly from execution, starvation, overwork and disease.
