Justice moves slowly in Cambodia, J even-or perhaps especially-where genocide is concerned. Thirty years after a Vietnamese invasion toppled the Khmers Rouges, and nearly ten years after he was detained, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, this week became the first leader to face trial at a UN-backed "hybrid" tribunal on the dusty outskirts of Phnom Penh, set up to achieve justice for survivors of a regime that killed perhaps 2m people.rnDuch ran Tuol Sleng or s-21, a notorious Phnom Penh prison (now museum), where more than 14,000 men, women and children were tortured and killed. For two days of procedural hearings the 66-year-old Christian convert sat attentively. At each adjournment he stood, touched his clasped hands to his forehead, and bowed to the crowded court. "Now he is just an old man. Before, he was the absolute man," says Vann Nath, who survived s-21 because Duch let him paint a portrait of the Khmers Rouges' leader, Pol Pot. "Whether someone lived or died hinged on him."
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