By JUDITH HUGHEY - The Dominion Post (New Zealand)
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Thirty years ago Kiwi trans-Atlantic rower Rob Hamill's brother suffered a cruel fate, tortured to death by the brutal Khmer Rouge after his yacht blew off course.
Now justice is close as the first United Nations-backed trial of one of the notorious Cambodian leaders gets under way in Phnom Penh.
Kerry Hamill was 28 when he was killed in 1978. He was sailing from Singapore to Bangkok with the yacht's co-owner Stuart Glass, from Canada, and the charterer, British man John Dewhirst.
On the stand at the trial this week is prison chief "Duch" - real name Kaing Guek Eav - who ran Tuol Sleng, the former primary school that was turned into a torture centre and prison. This was where Mr Hamill, Mr Dewhirst and possibly 10 or more Westerners, among more than 10,000 Cambodians, were tortured and killed. Mr Glass was killed when the yacht was captured.
Mr Hamill, who represented New Zealand at the Olympics in 1996 and rowed the Atlantic Ocean, setting a world record with Phil Stubbs, plans to go to Cambodia for the trial once it gets under way.
"We look forward to seeing some sort of justice as far as the family goes," Mr Hamill said. He has spent several years trying to find out what happened to his brother. "We think the weather blew him off course and he got into territorial waters."
Four Americans and two Australians are among the Westerners murdered by the Khmer Rouge.
The regime ruled Cambodia, which they renamed Democratic Kampuchea, from 1975 to 1979, when the Vietnamese gained control and forced them into hiding.
The Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S21, is now visited by most travellers to Phnom Penh. Photographs taken by the Khmer Rouge of their captives are displayed alongside "confessions" to being CIA operatives.
"Duch" - now 66 - is charged with overseeing the torture and extermination of more than 12,000 men, women and children at Tuol Sleng. He was formerly a maths teacher.
New Zealand's Dame Silvia Cartwright is one of two international judges, sitting alongside three Cambodian judges, on the Cambodia War Crimes Tribunal.
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Thirty years ago Kiwi trans-Atlantic rower Rob Hamill's brother suffered a cruel fate, tortured to death by the brutal Khmer Rouge after his yacht blew off course.
Now justice is close as the first United Nations-backed trial of one of the notorious Cambodian leaders gets under way in Phnom Penh.
Kerry Hamill was 28 when he was killed in 1978. He was sailing from Singapore to Bangkok with the yacht's co-owner Stuart Glass, from Canada, and the charterer, British man John Dewhirst.
On the stand at the trial this week is prison chief "Duch" - real name Kaing Guek Eav - who ran Tuol Sleng, the former primary school that was turned into a torture centre and prison. This was where Mr Hamill, Mr Dewhirst and possibly 10 or more Westerners, among more than 10,000 Cambodians, were tortured and killed. Mr Glass was killed when the yacht was captured.
Mr Hamill, who represented New Zealand at the Olympics in 1996 and rowed the Atlantic Ocean, setting a world record with Phil Stubbs, plans to go to Cambodia for the trial once it gets under way.
"We look forward to seeing some sort of justice as far as the family goes," Mr Hamill said. He has spent several years trying to find out what happened to his brother. "We think the weather blew him off course and he got into territorial waters."
Four Americans and two Australians are among the Westerners murdered by the Khmer Rouge.
The regime ruled Cambodia, which they renamed Democratic Kampuchea, from 1975 to 1979, when the Vietnamese gained control and forced them into hiding.
The Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S21, is now visited by most travellers to Phnom Penh. Photographs taken by the Khmer Rouge of their captives are displayed alongside "confessions" to being CIA operatives.
"Duch" - now 66 - is charged with overseeing the torture and extermination of more than 12,000 men, women and children at Tuol Sleng. He was formerly a maths teacher.
New Zealand's Dame Silvia Cartwright is one of two international judges, sitting alongside three Cambodian judges, on the Cambodia War Crimes Tribunal.
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