(ANSA) - PHNOM PENH, AUG 16 - The last surviving hierarch of Pol Pot's bloody Cambodian regime, former head of state Khieu Samphan, 90, appealed against the life sentence imposed on him in 2018 for genocide.
The ultra-radical communist regime of the so-called Khmer Rouge, which dominated Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 and was overthrown by the invasion of Vietnamese soldiers, is estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of at least two million people, including executions, torture, starvation and overwork.
According to Khieu Samphan's lawyer, Kong Sam Onn, the Cambodian court under UN aegis that sentenced his client had a "selective" approach to the evidence, discarding those in his favor a priori.
Kieu Samphan was found especially guilty of enocide against the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia.
He was sentenced along with Pol Pot's right hand man Nuon Chea, known as "Brother Number 2", who died in jail in 2019. Idue had already been sentenced to life in prison in 2014 for "crimes against humanity" for the brutal evacuation of the population of Phnom Penh in 1975 to rural labor camps.
The other hierarchs, including Pol Pot, died years ago, some during the trial. (HANDLE).