Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 15/06/2009: Photographs of victims of torture in S-21 were shown for many minutes on the screens at the ECCC, eclipsing the images of the hearing itself, at Duch’s trial
©Stéphanie Gée
Ka-set
http://cambodia.ka-set.info
By Stéphanie Gée
18-06-2009
Until then, he had always proved to be in control of himself, his words, his gestures and his facial expressions. On Tuesday June 16th, as the court discussed the acts of torture perpetrated in S-21, cracks appeared in the school teacher’s shell. A few sobs suppressed with difficulty and a turnaround, when Duch acknowledged the use, in his security centre, of a torture method he had until then formally denied, even during the pre-trial investigation. The cold-blooded animal gave way to the man. Duch’s examination by the judges on the functioning of S-21 continued with intensity, accompanied by the regret that the proceedings were not filmed better…
Four forms of basic torture
Responding to a question of the court’s president, Duch explained he favoured the “political method”, which consisted only in questions, over resorting immediately to torture. He had authorised four forms of torture in S-21: beatings, electroshocks, pouring water into the detainees’ nostrils, and the technique of the plastic bag placed over the head. He recalled that the interrogators were divided into four groups, each comprised of five or six people: the cold method one (without torture), the hot method one (with torture), the “chewing” one (endless interrogations until the expected confessions were made), and a special group whose mission was to interrogate important personalities, those who were of interest to the superior echelon. After a preliminary interrogation, according to the prisoner’s degree of cooperation, he or she was subjected to increasingly tough sessions, passing from one group to another.
After one female prisoner was sexually abused by an interrogator, Duch had decided to set up a team of female interrogators that was in charge of the female detainees. If he proved lenient with the interrogator at fault, he later said he had then felt enormous anger, but controlled it not to become a suspect in the eyes of his superiors.
To discourage the victims, it was not rare that tools – pliers or large knives – were displayed before them. A way to proceed inherited directly from M-13, the security centre Duch had previously directed.
Duch stated he had not participated to the prisoners’ interrogations. Yet, the annotation of a S-21 detainee’s confession indicated that Duch had been his first interrogator. It was written by the very hand of the accused himself. The latter recognised his writing, but explained he had added his name because his superior wanted, for that interrogation, more than one interrogator to be mentioned – he had therefore added his name subsequently. Indeed, only one interrogator worked at any time because there were not enough of them and it was difficult to train good ones, the accused explained later.
Duch breaks down
“Was torture systematically used during interrogations?”, judge Nil Nonn asked him. In most cases, it was, Duch answered, while quoting two exceptions he knew of: Koy Thuon, who was the Khmer Rouge Minister of Commerce, and another person whose name he struggled to say: the distinguished professor Phung Ton, whose widow and daughter were sitting in the courtroom, in the seats reserved for civil parties, and whom he was watching with attention. Unsettled, he broke down. His voice choked, he sniffed, and tried, unsuccessfully, to roll back his tears. The president left him a minute to regain composure. For the first time, he appeared sincere. The mention of the name of their respective husband and dad distressed Mrs. Phung and her daughter, as much as Duch’s genuine collapse as well as his persistence, they explained later, to hide behind some lies. About to break down, they left the room. Only the daughter later came back to her seat. Since the start of the trial, they have come to every single day of trial.
Duch, trainer on interrogation techniques
The president resumed the examination. He mentioned the recovered notebooks of the S-21 interrogators that stated the instructions they received: “you must hit but with self-control,” “hit but don’t kill”… Duch recognised that corresponded to the training he gave them. Then, the president returned to another document, the long beating up of a female prisoner until she fainted and which he allegedly took part in. He denied and added: “I do not believe such an event could have happened in S-21.” What about a fight he allegedly demanded between two individuals? Duch replied he could not remember any longer…
Nil Nonn returned to this interrogator often quoted by Duch and “who enjoyed torturing.” “I was satisfied with his work. He tried to get in my good graces by introducing hot torture techniques…” The accused then admitted he had protected those of his interrogators who were somewhat heavy-handed. If a prisoner died from the results of a torture session, he would mention it to his superiors but ask that no sanction be taken against those responsible.
The effects of torture explained expertly
Then it was the turn of judge Lavergne. “What characterises torture in your opinion?” “It is difficult for me to answer. I think it is a philosophical question…” The judge rephrased his question. “Isn’t its main characteristic to inflict extreme pain to a person who is under one’s control? Also, what forms can pain take?” Duch paraphrased him, adding: “Force was used to inflict pain and insults were uttered to unsettle the victim psychologically so that he or she would give in and make confessions.” Duch no longer looked obliquely, staring at a remote point, as he usually did. His increased unease as well as his tiredness could be felt.
The judge drove him into a corner. “Did you imagine what these prisoners could feel? For instance, when water was poured into their nose?” The accused gave him a technical answer. “According to the experiences of the intelligence services, when the stomach gets filled with water, the prisoner throws up the water swallowed and sometimes faints. When he or she recovers consciousness, the interrogation continues. That is how we used to do it. In S-21, we did that only once. […] But this tested technique of the old regime did not prove efficient when we wanted to use it…” “What can someone whose head was placed in a plastic bag feel?” “His or her nose and mouth are obstructed and he or she feels like they are suffocating, about to die…” No, Duch claimed, he did not attend sessions of suffocation and the torture was inflicted on very few detainees.
Additional torture techniques
After lunch break, judge Lavergne asked Duch whether the only limit imposed on a beating was to avoid killing the detainee. The accused added that it was not advised to beat the prisoner if that could interrupt the interrogation or weaken the prisoner to the point he or she could no longer answer questions, which would have prolonged the interrogation. What mattered was to obtain full confessions. Duch assured he had beaten a detainee only once. “Was it easy to know when to stop?”, the judge asked. “I was able to control my emotions and actions, and I knew where the beating should stop. It was not the same for young interrogators. Things could be extreme with them… […] I recognise I committed such acts of torture and that raises emotion in me…”
Did Duch think there were more or less cruel ways to inflict torture? Yes, that was the reason why he had introduced the technique of forcing prisoners to worship the picture of a dog, or an object, in order to humiliate them. “But all forms of torture constitute criminal acts in themselves,” he concluded. Later, he acknowledged: “The victims in S-21 suffered a lot, I recognise that.”
If he did not attend electrocution sessions – a procedure that was reported to him “subsequently”, after January 6th 1979, when they fled before the arrival of Vietnamese troops, he specified – he knew that it was practiced on the genitals of the victims and made them impotent. Regarding other acts of torture, he recognised that a detainee was once forced to eat excrement. But when a painting by artist Vann Nath, S-21 survivor, was shown on the screen, showing a prisoner hanging from gallows and another whose head was plunged in a jar filled with water, he stated that the image presented “modes of torture remote from reality.” So was the idea that children were thrown from upper floors, he added. “That never happened.”
Duch, the best in police work
The French judge recalled him that in last April [2009], he had stated in court to be better than his predecessor, Nath, in the practice of interrogations. Duch explained himself and his reply was rephrased by the judge: “So, you were the best in the purely police work, that is the extraction of information. The quality of the confessions was in their contents, not in the way people were interrogated.”
Interrogations: Duch claims he did not attend them
Judge Cartwright took over. The authors of many confessions recognised they were members of the CIA or KGB. Was that the result of an instruction given to the interrogators? The term CIA was indeed taught to them by Duch. His superior was surprised not to find any CIA members in S-21, whereas one of them had been uncovered in Sector 32. The accused then said he had requested his interrogators to look for CIA agents hidden among the prisoners received and to suggest this link to the detainees. Shortly afterwards, he confessed that child prisoners were not spared the torture sessions and he had not implemented any policy to protect them from such treatments.
As for the interrogations, Duch repeated he had barely seen anything and he justified it by saying that he did not go to the interrogation rooms, as that supervision task was entrusted to his deputy, Hor. The accused recognised that the practice of pulling the prisoners’ nails took place in S-21, but he added that when he found out about it, he requested that the torture practice be stopped immediately.
“How could you be sure that no other cases of rape or sexual abuses occurred in S-21 [aside from the rape of one female prisoner]?”, the New-Zealand judge asked him. “I was sure that if that had happened, I would have known.” “Are you ashamed today?” “I do not deny it.” “Back then, you were only trying to do your work…” “It was not only cowardice. It was a fact, I betrayed my friends because I was scared for my own life,” he repeated, echoing his words of the previous day.
Duch recognised the practice of drawing blood
Nil Nonn led the interrogation to the medical experimentations performed on the prisoners. Duch summarised: living prisoners were used for the purposes of the anatomy study for the newly-recruited medical staff; blood was drawn from many of them; and some served as guinea pigs to test new medication. Judge Lavergne later noted that the observed thereby backtracked on what he had said during the pre-trial investigation. Until then indeed, Duch had not recognised the practice of drawing blood but the memory seemed to return to him. “I remembered that my superior had called me to say that the blood collected would be used for a bank blood for wounded soldiers, so a careful selection of those whose blood would be collected was necessary to avoid any infection.” Duch concluded: “I do not deny that I did not see all of this, but there was nothing I could do. If I had talked about it, I would have been accused of not having a class position.”
Against all odds, Duch then explained that when he received the order from Nuon Chea to test pills – actually poison – on S-21 detainees, he “discreetly” replaced the powder contained in the capsule by Paracetamol reduced into powder. He did not even talk about it with his wife, he added. “There was therefore no danger in administering these pills to anyone.” On a final note, he stated: “If I had given these pills as they were and people had died, they would have died by my own hand, while I didn’t want to be directly involved in the murder of these people.”
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Distribution of speaking times between the parties
The Trial Chamber decided to allocate three hours to the co-Prosecutors, three hours to the civil party lawyers and four hours to the defence to interrogate the accused on the functioning of S-21. The co-Prosecutors lamented they did not have more time to go deeper in the issues and wished for a return to the former method: each party announced, before speaking, the amount of time they required. In response, Duch’s international co-lawyer denounced the lack of fairness, as the defence only obtained “barely more than half the time of their opponents.” “I wish that from time to time, in this trial, people remembered that even when one is charged with the most serious crimes, one has the right to a fair trial,” François Roux ranted. The international co-Prosecutor objected to those observations and stressed that different parties had different roles to fulfil and that the prosecution and the civil parties were not a substitute for each other, as the duty of the former was to prove the charges were founded against the accused.
Photo by: ELEANOR AINGE ROY
