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Cambodia tribunal convicts Khmer Rouge leaders
APTOPIX Cambodia Khme Werm
Cambodian Khmer Rouge survivors Soum Rithy, left, and Chum Mey, right, embrace each other after the verdicts were announced at the U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday. Three-and-a-half decades after the genocidal rule of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge ended, the tribunal on Thursday sentenced two top leaders of the former regime to life in prison on war crimes charges for their role in the country's terror period in the 1970s. - photo by Associated Press
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — They were leaders of Cambodia's infamous Khmer Rouge, the fanatical communist movement behind a 1970s reign of terror that transformed this entire Southeast Asian nation into a ruthless slave state — a place where cities were emptied of their inhabitants, religion and schools were banned, and anyone deemed a threat was executed. When the nightmare ended, in 1979, close to 2 million people were dead — a quarter of Cambodia's population at the time. On Thursday, a U.N.-backed tribunal convicted two of the once all-powerful men who ruled during that era of crimes against humanity in the first and possibly the last verdicts to be issued against the group's aging, top members.
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