The Master of Confessions (13 page)

“When you left home to go to your office, did you ever think about what distinguished your family life from the lives of the prisoners?”

“Your Honor, it had become commonplace. It was the same thing at M-13—we had to implement policy,” he says, referring to the camp he ran before S-21.

“I asked you if you never thought of the contrast between your family life and the lives of the families at S-21 . . .”

“Yes, I thought about it. I was already thinking about it at M-13. But we were brainwashed with an ideology that made a clear distinction between the terms ‘enemy' and ‘friend.' I really wanted to have children. If I didn't die, I could build a family. And if we had to die, well then, we would die.”

Other than psychologists, few people understand this double life. The human capacity to keep different areas, different activities, and different thoughts of one's life separate is a well-known psychological mechanism. It's called compartmentalization.

“Duch's inner world is separated into watertight bastions between which no information is allowed to filter,” explains the psychological expert witness in court.

We're all capable of compartmentalization. Compartmentalization is what allowed Duch to be a good father while knowing that children were being murdered at the prison. Once you've classified the other self as the enemy, it is possible to compartmentalize your two lives. One can go home and carry on as normal. The psychological expert witness continues, “We mustn't forget that we're talking about a man who had a very high idea of what he was doing—that is to say, serving Communism—and who was always convinced that everything he did was for the common good of the time, which is to say for the good of the Angkar.”

TWO OF DUCH'S BROTHERS-IN-LAW
were executed—one of them at S-21 under Duch's authority. He was the deputy head of the secret police in Kampong Thom province, and he was yet another Khmer Rouge torturer destroyed by his own Party. At first, Duch allowed his brother-in-law to write his initial confession unfettered, but then his boss, Son Sen, reprimanded him. Without a trace of emotion, Duch says: “I stayed calm. Later, he made many other unacceptable mistakes. If I had let him live, I would have endangered myself and my entire family. So I had him arrested, shackled, interrogated, and tortured.”

Judge Lavergne asks, “With your usual attention to detail, I'm sure that you read his confession with great interest. What did your brother-in-law confess to?”

“I can only tell you what I remember. He confessed that he had been a member of an enemy network since before 1970 and that he had been tasked with marrying my younger sister after my imprisonment. That's what I remember.”

“Which network was he supposedly a member of? The KGB, the CIA, or another one? Do you think his confession was credible? Did you believe it?”

“Your Honor, it is difficult for me to provide answers on this subject. I believed no more than 30 percent of it. Or maybe even less. Maybe only 20 percent.”

Since his brother-in-law wasn't the head of the family, Duch managed to have his sister and her children spared. He hadn't vouched for his former teachers, or for his old friends, or his brother-in-law. But he did for his little sister. He promised to reeducate her. Judge Lavergne asks:

“This principle was applied by the Communist Party of Kampuchea.”

Judge Lavergne asks the psychologist:

“Yes.”

Duch expresses his regret and remorse, but he doesn't suffer from depression.

“With Duch, there's a complete absence of a sense of guilt in the Western or psychoanalytical sense of the word,” says the psychologist. “One could say that he could not then and cannot now feel guilt, since that implies a sense of empathy and it supposes that he stops compartmentalizing his sense of self and becomes self-aware.”

F
ROM THE TRIAL'S OUTSET, THE PROSECUTOR DECLARES
that Duch's regret is insincere and his account of events incomplete. Duch knew everything that took place at S-21, gave lessons in torture techniques, and supervised interrogations himself, says the prosecution. It was not the work of his subordinates: Duch was behind each case.

Certainly he reported to and received orders from his superior in the Politburo. But the prosecutor also claims that Duch was solely in charge of the concentration complex's daily operation and was not averse to using his independent authority. Duch ran the regime's most important prison and enjoyed direct access to the regime's most senior leaders.

The defendant says that his job was only to facilitate things; that it was the Angkar that decided whom to arrest, and his subordinates who decided whom to torture. Duch was merely passing on orders, he states. The evidence, voices the prosecutor, points to another conclusion: that the defendant brought about, supervised, and participated in the crimes, and that he knowingly sent people to their deaths. Duch, says the prosecution, controlled the torture machine of S-21 in its entirety. “These aren't acts carried out by a man under duress, but rather the choices made by a devoted revolutionary. We are convinced that the leaders have revealed only some of their crimes.”

The prosecutor acknowledges that the defendant has cooperated with the court. He notes that Duch has foregone his right to silence and has facilitated the corroboration and discovery of evidence. He grudgingly admits that this limited collaboration has helped uncover some truths. But the prosecutor dismisses Duch's contrition as insincere and his confession as a sham.

Several times the prosecutor stares long and hard at the defendant. Duch sits facing the prosecutor, giving him his full attention. But when the trial ends eight months later, Duch turns his back on him.

ONLY A HANDFUL OF
photos of Duch taken at the time of the crime exist. One shows a smiling Duch entering a room where a number of men and women dressed in black are seated around a big dining table. It looks like a prison-staff break room, but in fact the photo was taken at Duch's office, on the corner of Streets 25 and 310. The meal was no ordinary one; Duch explains that it was his deputy Huy's wedding day. The prosecutor hopes to use the photo to demonstrate that, contrary to what Duch has claimed, the prison director had close personal contact with his staff, including with guards such as Him Huy, who testified at the trial. The problem is that the prosecutor, though he has been working on the case for three years, has made an embarrassing blunder: he has confused Him Huy, the young guard who became a unit leader, with Nun Huy, whose wedding day is being celebrated in the photo. Nun Huy was number three at the prison complex and the person in charge of S-24, the “reeducation” camp that also fell under Duch's authority. Nun Huy was killed at S-21 a month before it was shut down. The prosecutor has just wasted forty-five minutes of questioning time.

With barely disguised glee, Duch watches his foundering opponent's line of attack collapse. Then, with great composure, he tells the court that, had the dinner been a commonplace occurrence, there would not have been a photographer present and, he adds, “I would have had my own separate table.”

Duch finds nothing more invigorating than adversity. When he has an opponent on his knees, he is merciless. With the prosecutor falling to pieces, Duch shows the contempt that—as he knows better than most—is the condemned man's final revenge.

“The special unit: what did that do at S-21? What job did they have?” asks the prosecutor, still shaky after his blunder.

“I would like to remain silent about this.”

“Why?”

“Because I have nothing to add to what I have already reported.”

Duch dodges the prosecutor's best efforts to pin him down. Frustrated, the prosecutor takes refuge in a dead end. He and Duch are not on the same page. The prosecutor triggers the trial's slide toward a final, fruitless showdown. “I submit that you were not scared because you were extremely good at your job and you were a great asset for the Party.”

“Yes, it is true that I was doing a good job for them.”

“Your superiors were very satisfied with your work. You were a very proactive manager in implementing the Communist Party policy,” charges the prosecutor.

“I told you truthfully what they ordered me to do. I had to follow the orders 100 percent.”

“You were very proud of your work, of your techniques, and that you held that position.”

“What I hoped was to stay alive, because I was so honest with them. They needed me and I was loyal to them.”

“And that's why when you were in Pol Pot's company, it made you feel good. Do you remember saying that?”

“I never accompanied Pol Pot. I was happy because my former teacher, Son Sen, was the seventh member in the Party.”

“You were one of the most highly connected Party members. You felt protected, you felt untouchable. That's why you were not scared. You inflicted terror on innocent Cambodian people.”

“Who created that kind of paranoia? It was the Central Committee who imposed the terror.”

After some rough days of testimony the previous week, Duch regains his footing with astonishing renewed vigor. Only a few days earlier, he had been at his lowest. His opponent's bungling inconsistencies bring him back to his feet. When Duch's fall finally does come, it will be of his own making. For the time being, however, he watches the other side with a smirk of amusement and contempt.

Duch has a biting and sometimes even entertaining sense of irony. For example, at one point, he illustrates how dispensing justice is really always a display of power, whether under the yoke of the Khmer Rouge or the banner of the United Nations. One of his crimes, he says, was to have inculcated his own notions, ideas, and methods into the young people he recruited and who had no choice but to accept them. He then adds under his breath: “It seems to me that the same thing is happening here.”

Occasionally, he yields to the arrogance that feeds his sense of superiority. But he knows how to color it with humor.

“Mr. Kaing Guek Eav, could you please tell the court when you felt you were no longer the prisoner of the Khmer Rouge? In what year was it?” asks the prosecutor.

“It was on May 10, 1999, when the government put me in the hands of the military tribunal.”

“Are you telling us that for the twenty-six or twenty-seven years since 1971, you had no chance to escape the Khmer Rouge? Is that what you're trying to tell us?”

“Could you please make sure your math is correct? Yes, I was detained by the Khmer Rouge in various ways.”

Duch had been on the verge of falling apart; now he's sharper than ever. Faced with questions asked a hundred times, he defiantly asserts his right to remain silent. His answers can be so abrupt he sometimes sounds rude.

“I was in politics. Anatomy wasn't an interest of mine,” he says in response to a question, posed for the umpteenth time, about the blood transfused from prisoners.

Only three months into the trial, the international chief prosecutor deems it appropriate to quit. At the ensuing press conference, he says: “In modern war-crimes courts, all the information is kept on file precisely to avoid disruption by changes in personnel. The only thing that matters is that there is someone who is in charge, legally, of making decisions, and who does just that. Everything else stays on course.”

To Duch, that must sound like a description of S-21.

When the international deputy prosecutor sits back down in the courtroom, there's a terrible weight of powerlessness hanging over him. On June 22, he sinks into an abyss from which he does not emerge until six months later, during the final arguments—and then only because the defendant brings about his own downfall.

ANY FOREIGNER WHO HAS ATTENDED
any sort of public forum in Cambodia—whether it is a public information session, a press conference, or a courtroom cross-examination—has walked away feeling discombobulated, exasperated, or even laughing out loud at the strange workings of the Cambodian mind in action, and its unique tendency toward repetition. During my first press conference there, the Cambodian journalist who took the microphone from me asked the exact same question I had just asked, word for word. Utterly taken aback, all I could do was stare at the journalist.