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By GRANT PECK / AP WRITER | PHNOM PENH — Prosecutors vowed Tuesday to get justice for the 1.7 million victims of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, as they opened their case against the man accused of running the communist radicals' torture machine.

A Cambodian survivor of Tuol Sleng prison shows how shackles were used at the norotious torture centre. The Khmer Rouge regime's prison chief Kaing Guek Eav—better known as Duch—has finally stood trial for Cambodia's "Killing Fields" atrocities. Duch is accused of overseeing the torture and execution of 15,000 people three decades ago. (Photo: AFP)

The long-awaited trial against Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, began Monday at a UN-backed genocide tribunal with a full reading of the 45-page indictment against him—a litany of grisly accounts of the atrocities allegedly committed under the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge rule of the country they called Democratic Kampuchea.

Executioners threw victims to their deaths, bludgeoned them and then slit their bellies, or had medics draw so much blood that their lives drained away, according to the indictment.

"For 30 years, one-and-a-half million victims of the Khmer Rouge have been demanding justice for their suffering. For 30 years, the survivors of Democratic Kampuchea have been waiting for accountability. For 30 years, a generation of Cambodians have been struggling to get answers for their fate," co-prosecutor Chea Leang said Tuesday morning.

"Justice will be done. ... History demands it," she said.

The 500-seat spectators' section of the courtroom was filled, as it was Monday when disabled survivors of the regime joined earnest young law students to watch the proceedings get under way on the outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh.

Duch, now 66, commanded the group's main S-21 prison, also known as Tuol Sleng, where as many as 16,000 men women and children are believed to have been brutalized before being sent to their deaths.

Former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch. (Photo: AFP)

The UN-assisted tribunal is seeking to establish responsibility for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians from starvation, medical neglect, slave-like working conditions and execution under the Khmer Rouge, whose top leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.

Duch is charged with committing crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as torture and homicide, and could face a maximum penalty of life in prison. Cambodia has no death penalty.

His job was to extract confessions of counterrevolutionary activity, but "every prisoner who arrived at S-21 was destined for execution," said the indictment against him.

"According to Duch, only four methods of torture were allowed: beating, electrocution, placing a plastic bag over the head and pouring water into the nose," said the indictment.

Among the more lurid accusations was that children of prisoners were taken from their parents and dropped from the third floor of a prison building to break their necks.

Duch's French lawyer, Francois Roux, said in February that his client wished "to ask forgiveness from the victims, but also from the Cambodian people. He will do so publicly. This is the very least he owes the victims."

Duch disappeared after the group fell from power, living under assumed names, before he was discovered by chance by a British journalist in the Cambodian countryside in 1999. Since then he has been in detention.

Local interest in the trial by the public at large is hard to gauge. The majority of Cambodia's 14 million-plus population was born after the 1979 fall of the Khmer Rouge, and most people have to concentrate on making a living in the poverty-stricken country.

Motorcycle taxi driver Vong Song , 52, said Tuesday morning that he hears people talking about the tribunal, but he's too busy making a living to pay for his three children's education to worry about it.

"Let the court and the government do it. For me, the important thing is earning money to support my family. That's what I think," he said.