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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The man accused of being the Khmer Rouge’s chief torturer put down his prepared speech, removed his eyeglasses and gazed at the courtroom audience Tuesday as he pleaded for forgiveness from the country he helped terrorize three decades ago.
“At the beginning, I only prayed to ask for forgiveness from my parents, but later, I prayed to ask forgiveness from the whole nation,” Kaing Guek Eav — better known as Duch — recounted on the second day of his trial before a genocide tribunal.
Duch, 66, could face life in prison. He led the group’s main prison, where up to 16,000 men, women and children may have been brutalized before being sent to their deaths.
