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PHNOM PENH - KHMER Rouge leader Nuon Chea appealed on Thursday against his detention by Cambodia's genocide tribunal, arguing in his first public court appearance that he should be freed as he awaits trial.
Nuon Chea, the most senior of the five Khmer Rouge cadre facing trial, told the court that he posed no threat to the public and that he would not try to flee Cambodia.
'I wish to say that I am willing to testify before this court. I would never wish to leave my beloved country. I would never exert any pressure on witnesses. No one is worried about my security,' he told the court.
Courtroom guards had to help the 81-year-old stand as he rose to speak, although he appeared generally healthy with close-cropped white hair and wearing a newly pressed long-sleeved shirt.
His appearance marks only the second public hearing since the UN-backed tribunal was convened 18 months ago.
Nuon Chea was the closest deputy of Khmer Rouge supreme leader Pol Pot, and was alleged the architect of the regime's devastating execution policies during its 1975-1979 rule. He is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed by the Khmer Rouge, which dismantled modern Cambodian society in its effort to forge a radical agrarian utopia.
Cities were emptied, their populations exiled to vast collective farms, while schools were closed, religion banned and the educated classes targeted for extermination.
Cambodia's genocide tribunal was convened in 2006 after nearly a decade of fractious talks between the government and United Nations over how to prosecute those behind one of the 20th century's worst atrocities.
But it has been badly hampered by delays amid infighting among foreign and Cambodian judges, as well as attempts by the Cambodian Bar Association to assert its authority over foreign defence lawyers. -- AFP
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