Top leader denies genocide charges

One of the top surviving leaders of Cambodia's ruthless Khmer Rouge regime yesterday denied genocide charges and rejected the label of "murderer" in forceful closing remarks at a lengthy UN-backed trial.

The Khmer Rouge's former head of state, 85-year-old Khieu Samphan, spoke angrily to the Phnom Penh chamber trying him and another senior leader, 90-year-old Nuon Chea, for the regime's killing of ethnic Vietnamese and Muslim minorities, forced marriage and rape.

The men are the two most senior living members of the radical Maoist group that seized control of Cambodia in 1975 and carried out some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. Up to two million people are believed to have been killed by the time the Khmer Rouge was overthrown in 1979.

The pair were handed life sentences in 2014 after convictions over the forced evacuation of around two million Cambodians from Phnom Penh into rural labour camps and murders at one execution site.

But Khieu Samphan claims he was not part of the killing machine that exterminated nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population from 1975-1979.

"I didn't know about these issues," he said, adding that the "idea of Cambodian genocide" was invented by Vietnam.

Nuon Chea, known as "Brother Number Two," declined to deliver a closing statement and watched the proceedings from a court holding cell due to his frail health.

The judge has not said when the verdict will be delivered.

The hybrid court, which uses a mix of Cambodian and international law, was created with the backing of the UN in 2006 to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders.

Only three people have been convicted by the court as several key Khmer Rouge leaders have died without facing justice, including "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, who passed away in 1998.