Khmer Rouge defendant in 'critical condition'

A former Khmer Rouge leader on trial for genocide is in critical condition in hospital, his lawyer said Wednesday, stoking fears that top figures in the murderous regime may never face justice. Ieng Sary, who at 87 years old is the oldest defendant at Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court, was hospitalised on Monday with stomach problems -- the latest in a string of ailments. "His situation is critical now," Ieng Sary's Cambodian lawyer Ang Udom told AFP. The former student radical, who later emerged as one of the few public faces of the Khmer Rouge during its brutal rule in the late 1970s, has difficulty eating and has been vomiting, he said. The three most senior surviving leaders of the brutal Khmer Rouge stand accused of some of the gravest crimes in modern history for their roles in up to two million deaths during the "Killing Fields" era. Ieng Sary, along with "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, 86, and one-time head of state Khieu Samphan, 81, deny charges including war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Health fears have long hung over the court with the octogenarian defendants all suffering a variety of ailments. "If they die the process of finding justice will end in the middle of the river and it will be meaningless for us," said Chum Mey, 82, a prominent survivor of the Khmer Rouge's notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. "I want them to admit their mistakes -- that's all. I think they are cowards," he told AFP. A court official declined to comment on the latest health condition of Ieng Sary, who also suffers from heart and back problems. The one-time minister, who was born to a poor ethnic Khmer family in south Vietnam, has repeatedly denied knowledge of the mass executions that came to define the Khmer Rouge regime, and claimed he had no powers of arrest. His wife Ieng Thirith, the regime's former social affairs minister, was supposed to be in the dock with him, but she was deemed unfit for trial last year after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Led by "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge wiped out nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population through starvation, overwork or execution in a bid to create an agrarian utopia during their rule. Cambodia's war crimes court has so far achieved one conviction, sentencing former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav to life in jail for overseeing the deaths of some 15,000 people. In another setback, the tribunal was forced to suspend the trial of the three leaders Monday because of a strike over unpaid wages.