Khmer Rouge ‘first lady’ mentally unfit for trial

Published on 14/09/2012 01:01

One of the most senior figures in Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime is set to walk free this week after an international court ruled she was mentally unfit to stand trial.

Ieng Thirith, a former social affairs minister and sister-in-law of the late architect of the 1970s “Killing Fields” revolution, Pol Pot, had made no improvement in her mental state since last November, the court said, when experts said she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

The 80-year-old, known as the Khmer Rouge “first lady”, would be released today if no appeal was lodged by prosecutors, said Neth Pheaktra, a spokesman at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC), as the hybrid UN-Cambodian tribunal is known.

Although a recovery was never expected, the release of Ieng Thirith will be another blow for Cambodians seeking an explanation for the horrors of the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. Since it was set up in 2005, the court has delivered only one verdict, life imprisonment for prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch.