From the BBC:
Nuon Chea served as regime leader Pol Pot's deputy and Khieu Samphan was the Maoist regime's head of state.
They are the first top-level leaders to be held accountable for its crimes.
Up to two million people are thought to have died under the Khmer Rouge from 1975-79 - of starvation and overwork or executed as enemies of the state.
Judge Nil Nonn said the men were guilty of "extermination encompassing murder, political persecution, and other inhumane acts comprising forced transfer, enforced disappearances and attacks against human dignity''.
http://www.bbc.com/...
The wheels of Cambodian justice may turn slowly, but at least they finally delivered. The two men will serve life sentences in prison. According to the BBC article, they also still face a separate trial for charges of genocide.
From Wikipedia:
The Khmer Rouge (kəˈmɛər ˈruːʒ; French for "Red Khmers", French pronunciation: [kmɛʁ ʁuʒ]; Khmer: Khmer Kraham) was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Cambodia. It was formed in 1968 as an offshoot of the Vietnam People's Army from North Vietnam. It was the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Khieu Samphan. Democratic Kampuchea was the name of the state as controlled by the government of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. It allied with North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and Pathet Lao during the Vietnam War against the anti-Communist forces.
The organization is remembered especially for orchestrating the Cambodian genocide, which resulted from the enforcement of its social engineering policies.[1] Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the supply of medicine, led to the death of thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria. Arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978, are considered to have constituted genocide.[2]
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