A U.N.-backed genocide tribunal arrested and formally charged former Khmer Rouge Prime Minister Khieu Samphan

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/11/19/khmer.rouge/index.html

(CNN) -- A U.N.-backed genocide tribunal arrested and formally charged former Khmer Rouge Prime Minister Khieu Samphan with crimes against humanity Monday in connection with the Cambodian communist movement's violent reign, a U.N. spokesman said.

Khieu will face an initial hearing before the tribunal either Wednesday or Thursday, Yves Sorokobi, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, told CNN Monday afternoon.
He is the fifth ex-Khmer Rouge official arrested by the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia since September.
The charges came less than a week after the Cambodian government brought Khieu to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, where he was admitted to a hospital for medical treatment.
Cambodian and French lawyers will represent him before the tribunal, which was established to prosecute ex-Khmer Rouge officials for the killings that accompanied their blood-soaked 1975-1979 rule.
More than 2 million people died during the party's efforts to transform Cambodia into an agrarian utopia before troops from neighboring Vietnam overthrew the regime. Remnants of the Khmer Rouge continued to battle Cambodia's government into the 1990s before fragmenting in the middle of the decade.

Last week, the U.N. tribunal arrested Ieng Sary, the regime's former foreign minister, and his wife, Ieng Thirith, who had also been a member of the Khmer Rouge. Ieng Sary was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, while his wife faces only crimes against humanity, the ECCC said.
The top surviving Khmer Rouge leader, Nuon Chea, was arrested in September and faces trial before the special tribunal on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Another Khmer Rouge veteran, Kaing Guek Eav, is charged with carrying out mass executions and torture as the commandant of a notorious prison in Phnom Penh.

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, known as "Brother Number One" during the group's four years in power, died in a jungle hideout in 1998.
And Ta Mok, the former Khmer Rouge military chief known as "The Butcher," died in a Cambodian military hospital in 2006 while awaiting trial for crimes against humanity.