When the Khmer Rouge forces were routed from Phnom Penh in January 1979, they left behind a ruined and vacant city. Following the odour of decomposing bodies, Cambodian and Vietnamese liberators discovered a high school surrounded by barbed wire fences. Inside they found 14 prisoners whose throats had been cut. Other rooms contained grisly evidence of torture: whips, lengths of chain, thousands of written confessions, photographs of beaten and terrified men and women. Scrawled across documents were orders from the prison’s commandant. On one interrogation record, he wrote, “beat until he tells everything.” Beside a list of names: “kill every last one.”

This was S-21 prison, and last week that commandant made a final appearance in court before a panel of crimson-robed judges, who will issue their verdict in early 2010. Kaing Guek Eav, known by his revolutionary name, “Duch,” is the first defendant at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a United Nations-backed tribunal. His trial has captivated Cambodians. Broadcast live on television, it’s debated at dinner tables and on radio programs. Each day, hundreds of Cambodians travel to Phnom Penh to attend in person, many leaving their villages in the middle of the night for the long bus ride. “I want to go to the trial to see what an evil person looks like,” an elderly woman told me on the eve of her journey. “I want to see his real face.”

Since the trial began in March, Cambodians have heard chilling testimony about torture techniques and bizarre medical experiments. But they have also been profoundly challenged by Duch’s defence. Duch was not an evil man, his lawyers argue, but a flawed one. Experts have testified he is now capable of compassion and ready to be reintegrated into society. Duch himself has suggested something many Cambodians would have considered preposterous: that they forgive him. He set the tone of the trial from his first statement. “I am responsible for the crimes committed at S-21, especially the tortures and execution of the people there,” he declared on March 31. He apologized to the victims and their families, and to all survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime, before concluding, “I would like you to please leave an open window for me to seek forgiveness.” Continue…