Judges at the United Nations-backed court sentenced Duch to 35 years in prison. However, they reduced his sentence by five years after ruling that he had been illegally detained by a military court following his arrest in 1999.
Duch's prison term was reduced by a further 11 years for time served, meaning that he faces a total of 19 years behind bars.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, was convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes for his role at Tuol Sleng, or S-21, the regime’s most important interrogation centre where as many as 16,000 men, women and children were brutalised before being systematically exterminated.
Only 14 people are known to have survived Tuol Sleng, which under Duch’s meticulous and rigid hand evolved into an efficient killing machine that came to symbolise the worst excesses of increasingly paranoid Khmer Rouge leaders.
Entire families were imprisoned for the alleged crimes of a single member, and on a single day in 1977 alone, Duch ordered the executions of 160 children.
An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians dying of disease, exhaustion from overwork, torture or execution.
During a six-month trial last year – the tribunal’s first – prosecutors painted Duch, a 67 year-old former math teacher, as a driving force behind the regime’s execution campaign, and argued that he guided crimes committed at Tuol Sleng.
Duch’s defence, on the other hand, contended that he had merely carried out orders issued by his superiors with an eye towards ensuring his own survival.
