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First Khmer Rouge trial commences

The long-awaited UN-backed trial of a former Khmer Rouge leader in Cambodia has opened at a Phnom Penh court, 30 years after the murderous regime fell.

Kaing Guek Eav - better known as Duch - was head of a notorious prison camp and is accused of presiding over the murder and torture of at least 15,000 inmates.

The trial is the result of a decade of painstaking and often ill-tempered negotiations, a BBC correspondent says.

Up to 1,000 people are expected to attend the hearing.

Duch was driven by bulletproof car from a detention centre to the court. He is one of five former Khmer Rouge leaders who will face trial.

Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambathc called it "a very big day for the Cambodian people because the justice that they have been waiting for 30 years is starting to get closer and closer".

"I came here to see the trial with my own eyes, so I could tell villagers who could not be here," Mahd Musa, 54, who lost seven family members during the Khmer Rouge period, told Reuters news agency.

"It is a very important day for me. I cannot miss it."

'Killing fields'

Comrade Duch, a former teacher, was commander of the Tuol Sleng interrogation centre, also known as S-21, in the capital Phnom Penh for four years after the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975.

He is accused of personally overseeing the systematic torture of more than 15,000 prisoners.

Those who survived the ordeal were sent for execution in the so-called "killing fields".

Many of the inmates were loyal party members who were caught up in the frenzy of paranoid killing that accompanied the Khmer Rouge's final months in power, the BBC's South East Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, says.

Duch, 66, has been in detention since 1999, two years after he was discovered by a British photographer.

A born-again Christian, he is said to have co-operated with investigating judges - and is expected to reveal important information about the decisions made by the organisation's leadership.

His information could help in the trials set for later this year of the five other defendants, analysts say.

They include the surviving top leaders Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan, who are all elderly and in poor health.

If preparations for their trials get bogged down, as seems likely, Comrade Duch may be the only man ever held to account for the Khmer Rouge atrocities, our correspondent adds.

Drawn-out negotiations

But the man most wanted for crimes against humanity in Cambodia will never be brought to justice.

WHO WERE THE KHMER ROUGE?
# Maoist regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979
# Founded and led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998
# Abolished religion, schools and currency in a bid to create agrarian utopia
# Up to two million people thought to have died from starvation, overwork or execution

Pol Pot, the founder and leader of the Khmer Rouge, died in a camp along the border with Thailand in 1998, the same year his few remaining guerrillas agreed to finally abandon their fight.

As many as two million people are thought to have died from starvation, overwork and execution as the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities to send people to work on collective farms during its four years in power.

Cambodia originally asked the United Nations and international community to help set up a tribunal into the genocide more than a decade ago.

A joint tribunal was finally set up in 2006 following long drawn-out negotiations between the Phnom Penh government and the UN.

Bail hearings, appeals and pre-trial procedures have contributed to further delays.