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Ieng Sary

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Ieng Sary (Khmer: អៀង សារី, born October 24, 1924[1], Loeung Va, Tra Vinh) was a powerful figure in the Khmer Rouge. He was the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979 and held several senior positions in the Khmer Rouge until his defection to the government in 1996.

Early years

Of Khmer ancestry on his father's side, and Chinese ancestry on his mother's,[2][3] Ieng Sary was born in Chau Thanh, Tra Vinh province, southern Vietnam. Sary changed his name from the Vietnamese Kim Trang when he joined the Khmer Rouge. He is the brother-in-law by marriage, of the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot (real name: Saloth Sar). Sary and Saloth Sar studied at Phnom Penh's Lycée Sisowath where their future wives, the sisters Khieu Thirith and Khieu Ponnary also studied. Before leaving Cambodia to study in Paris, Sary was engaged to Khieu Thirith.[4]

Sary and Saloth Sar also studied together in Paris. Whilst there, Sary rented an apartment in the Latin Quarter, a hotbed of student radicalism. He and Saloth Sar met with French communist intellectuals, and formed their own cell of Cambodian communists.

Sary and Khieu Thirith married in the town hall of Paris' 15th arrondissement the summer of 1951 and Thirith took her husband's name, becoming Ieng Thirith.[4]

Midlife

After returning to Cambodia, he was inducted into the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Kampuchea in September 1960.[4]

After the fall of the Khmer Republic on 17 April 1975, Sary made personal appeals to expatriates (the well-educated Cambodians who had survived the prison death camps, and had afterwards moved abroad and others who wanted to come back to Cambodia homeland) to help rebuild Cambodia. However upon returning to Cambodia, they were arrested on arrival, and thrown into brutal detention centres.[5] Together with Pol Poth, Ieng Sary was sentenced to death in absentia after the Khmer Rouge had been overthrown in 1979.

The then Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk officially pardoned Ieng Sary in 1996.

Arrest and Trial

Ieng Sary, reportedly living in "an opulent Phnom Penh villa surrounded by security guards and barbed wire"[6] was arrested on November 12, 2007 in Phnom Penh on an arrest warrant from the Cambodia Tribunal[7] for war crimes and crimes against humanity. His wife, Ieng Thirith, was also arrested for crimes against humanity.[8]

On 16 December, 2009, the tribunal officially charged him with genocide for his involvement with the subjugation and murder of Vietnamese and Muslim minorities in Cambodia. [9]

References

  1. ^ http://www.aol.in/news/story/2007111200459019000001/index.html
  2. ^ Ieng Sary's Brief Biography; Ieng Sary, Howard J. De Nike, John B. Quigley, Kenneth J. Robinson, Cambodia Tribunal Populaire Revolutionnaire, Helen Jarvis, Nereida Cross (2000). Genocide in Cambodia: Documents from the Trial from of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights) (Hardcover). University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 90. ISBN 0812235398.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Bora, Touch. "Jurisdictional and Definitional Issues". Khmer Institute. Retrieved 2007-11-19.
  4. ^ a b c David P. Chandler (1999). "Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot" (ISBN 0813335108). p.32. Westview Press. Retrieved 2007-11-15. Cite error: The named reference "chandler" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  5. ^ BBC News, Top Khmer Rouge diplomat in court. June 30, 2008
  6. ^ The Statesman, [1]
  7. ^ Ed Johnson and Paul Tighe, "Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Arrested in Cambodia", Bloomberg.com, November 12, 2007.
  8. ^ "Ex-official of Khmer Rouge and wife arrested for crimes against humanity", Associated Press (International Herald Tribune), November 12, 2007.
  9. ^ "Genocide charges for two former Khmer Rouge Leaders"
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