For victims, lengthy Khmer Rouge trial painful

By Martin Petty

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - After six months of testimony in the first U.N.-backed trial of a high-ranking member of the former Khmer Rouge, many Cambodians who suffered from the tyrannical regime have one question: Why is it taking so long?

Closing arguments begin next Monday in the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, former chief of the notorious S-21 prison, where more than 14,000 "enemies" of the ultra-Maoist revolution died.

Any sentencing will not take place until next year. Four other senior Khmer Rouge cadres are in custody awaiting trial.

Most Cambodians want swift justice for the first senior Pol Pot cadre facing a tribunal in the three decades since the end of the regime blamed for an estimated 1.7 million deaths.

"The longer it drags on, the more painful it is," said Eng Mom, 43, who remembers when the Khmer Rouge showed up at her home in 1978, blindfolded her father, bound his hands behind his back, threw him on a horse cart and killed him.

Working at a roadside stall in the capital Phnom Penh where she binds books with her daughter, she said she never watches the trial. She's too busy with work. When she hears about it or catches a glimpse on the news, it's too painful.

"I have too many brothers or sisters gone missing during the Khmer Rouge time," she said. "I don't know much about the trial. I'd like to see justice for my relatives who were killed, but when I see Duch on TV it brings back a flood of bad memories."

The tribunal's five-judge panel seeks justice for a quarter of Cambodia's population who perished from execution, overwork and torture in one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century when the regime ruled from 1975-79 led by now-deceased Pol Pot.