Pol Pot Publicly Shamed Mass Murderer Denounced By His Former Comrades

Head bowed, eyes welling with tears, the Khmer Rouge leader who presided over the deaths of as many as 2 million Cambodians sat in shame while his former comrades denounced him, a Western journalist said Monday.

The white-haired, 69-year-old Pol Pot, wearing baggy black trousers, a gray shirt and blue scarf, was put on a makeshift stage while his former comrades shouted, “Crush, crush, crush, Pol Pot and his clique!” said Nate Thayer, a correspondent for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

The Khmer Rouge allowed Thayer to see Pol Pot’s public disgracing on Friday, making him the first Western journalist in 18 years to see the secretive guerrilla chief.

For the man who ruled Cambodia for four blood-soaked years in the 1970s, the shock of being turned on by his own men appeared to be too much. After his 80-minute “show trial” outdoors - and his sentencing to life in prison - Pol Pot needed support from the men gripping his arms, Thayer said. He walked with the use of a jungle-cut bamboo cane, and appeared seriously ill, Thayer said.

“The events of his purge and trial were so traumatic that I thought he might die during the process,” Thayer said in a news release received Monday in Bangkok. “You could see the anguish on his face as he was denounced by his former loyalists. He was close to tears.”

Seven Khmer Rouge members accused Pol Pot and his men of murder, hurting the nation and stealing money from the party. They said that the “drunk and corrupt” commanders had raped wives of their comrades.

Thayer, a former reporter for The Associated Press and a journalist long known for his excellent contacts within the Khmer Rouge, was permitted Friday to enter Anlong Veng, about 200 miles northwest of Phnom Penh. His sighting of Pol Pot appeared to lay rest many of the rumors about Pol Pot, who from time to time has been rumored dead.

A cameraman working with Thayer filmed Pol Pot’s humiliation, excerpts of which were to be shown on ABC’s “Nightline” Monday night. Pol Pot was last seen by Western journalists in 1979, when a Vietnamese invasion toppled the Khmer Rouge regime and sent Pol Pot fleeing.