Khmer Rouge survivor tells court of wife's death in torture prison

Phnom Penh - A survivor of a notorious Khmer Rouge torture prison wept Wednesday as he told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes tribunal how the Maoist regime murdered his wife after accusing the couple of being CIA and KGB spies. Bou Meng, 68, who is one of only a handful of survivors from the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, told the court he escaped death by painting portraits of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot but said his wife suffered the same fate as more than 15,000 people who were murdered after being detained at the torture facility. 'They regularly beat me, and one day, they used an electrical wire to electrocute me, and I immediately fell unconscious,' he said. 'They also poured water over my face, and then I also fell unconscious.' Bou Meng's testimony came in the trial of former S-21 chief Kaing Guek Eav, known by his revolutionary alias Duch, who faces charges of crimes against humanity, premeditated murder and breeches of the Geneva Conventions. He is one of five former Khmer Rouge leaders facing trial for their roles in the deaths of up to 2 million people through execution, starvation or overwork during the group's 1975-1979 rule. Duch has admitted guilt and apologized for his crimes, but his lawyers have sought to prove his role in the torture and executions was minimal because, they said, he was only acting on orders. But Bou Meng told the court he had witnessed Duch instruct guards to beat prisoners and recounted the horrific scenes he saw when he first arrived at the prison. 'I arrived in the group cell, and everyone in there looked like hell,' he said. 'I was dizzy when I entered the room and so scared.' The artist and teacher said Khmer Rouge soldiers fooled him and his wife into travelling to the prison by telling them they had been given jobs at a college of fine arts. 'I was planting vegetables and digging canals, so I was happy that I would teach students at the college of fine arts because I thought then I would be working in my profession,' he said. When they arrived in Phnom Penh, the two were handcuffed and blindfolded and, like all prisoners sent to S-21, taken to be photographed, interrogated and forced to sign confessions, Bou Meng said. 'That photograph is the only photograph I have of my wife,' he said. 'The others were destroyed after the Khmer Rouge came to power.' He said interrogators beat him with sticks and whips, asked him when he joined the CIA, the US intelligence agency, and how many people he had recruited as well as interrogated him about the Soviet intelligence agency. 'They asked me all about the KGB and the CIA but did not even know what they were,' he said. Like fellow S-21 survivor Vann Nath, Bou Meng was eventually taken to a separate part of the facility and forced to paint portraits of Pol Pot, who died in 1998. He never saw his wife again. 'I survived because I could paint the perfect portrait of Pol Pot,' he said. 'I am here because I do not know what happened to my wife and why she is gone and why she was tortured.' The tribunal was established in 2006 after a decade of negotiations between the Cambodian government and the United Nations. Duch is the only one of the five former Khmer Rouge leaders so far to be indicted on war crimes charges, and if convicted, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.