Ex-Khmer Rouge leader is charged

Judges of Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal put the former Khmer Rouge head of state in detention after charging him yesterday with crimes against humanity and war crimes, a spokesman said.

Khieu Samphan is the last of five senior officials of the brutal regime to be taken in custody ahead of a long-delayed genocide trial.

Police arrested Khieu Samphan, 76, at a Phnom Penh hospital where he had been undergoing treatment since last Wednesday after suffering a stroke. Officers held Khieu Samphan's arms to support him as they led him to a police car, which sped away in a heavily guarded convoy early Monday to the tribunal's offices.

Khieu Samphan later was "formally charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes" during his appearance before the co-investigating judges, said tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath.

He added that Khieu Samphan's lawyers plan to appeal against his detention.

Khieu Samphan's defense team will include French lawyer Jacques Verges and a veteran Cambodian legal expert, the tribunal's defense support section said in a statement.

Verges' previous clients include Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

In an interview with The Associated Press in 2004, Khieu Samphan said he has known Verges since he was a student in France in the 1950s, when the two were active in student movements against French colonialism and the French war in Vietnam.

"He and I used to attend meetings of student committees against colonialism. That's what bound us together in friendship," he said in the interview.

Khieu Samphan's Cambodian lawyer is Say Bory, who used to be the president of the Cambodian Bar Association and a member of the constitutional council, the country's highest legal body. Say Bory currently acts as legal adviser to former King Norodom Sihanouk, the statement said.

The arrests of the Khmer Rouge suspects come almost three decades after the group fell from power, and many fear the aging suspects could die before being brought to justice. After years of delays, the trial is expected to begin in 2008.

Most historians and researchers believe the radical policies of the Khmer Rouge, which sought a utopian communist state, led to the deaths of at least 1.7 million Cambodians through starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

An insight into Khieu Samphan's defense hit bookstores last week, when he published his version of the Khmer Rouge's story.

In "Reflection on Cambodian History Up to the Era of Democratic Kampuchea," Khieu Samphan says the Khmer Rouge only wanted what was best for Cambodia.

"There was no policy of starving people. Nor was there any direction set out for carrying out mass killings," he writes. "There was always close consideration of the people's well-being. "

He writes that the Khmer Rouge was resilient "in the struggle to defend national sovereignty, (and) in demanding social justice. "

Khieu Samphan describes Pol Pot, the regime's late leader, as a patriot concerned with social justice and fighting foreign enemies. He " sacrificed his entire life ... to defend national sovereignty," the book says.

However, Khieu Samphan assigns Pol Pot with responsibility for the group's policies, and says he was involved in the purges of any Khmer Rouge suspected to be disloyal or spies, claiming they probably numbered in the hundreds.