Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge, was one of three elderly leaders on trial for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes when he died last week in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He was 87. For years he had had heart problems and other ailments and was taken from his cell at a special tribunal to hospital on March 4th for what his lawyers said were gastrointestinal problems.
A brother-in-law of Pol Pot, the top leader of the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Sary was part of an inner circle of communists who led the movement that caused the deaths of 1.7 million people during its rule over Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.“I have done nothing wrong,” Ieng Sary said before his arrest in 2007. “I am a gentle person. I believe in good deeds.”
As foreign minister, Ieng Sary helped persuade hundreds of Cambodian diplomats and intellectuals to return home from overseas to help the new revolutionary government. They were sent to “re-education camps”, and most were executed.
After the ouster of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, he continued a civil war against the new government until he surrendered with thousands of troops in 1996 in return for the king's pardon. He lived openly in a villa in Phnom Penh, travelling to Thailand for medical treatment, before his arrest.
Ieng Sary was born in 1925, in Tra Vinh province of Southern Vietnam to an ethnic Cambodian father and ethnic Chinese mother. His birth name was Kim Trang.
He was one of a group of future Khmer Rouge leaders, including Pol Pot, who studied in France. After returning to Phnom Penh in 1957 he became an underground member of the Communist Party of Cambodia. He went to Hanoi in 1970 and then lived in Beijing, before returning permanently to Cambodia in April 1975, when the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh.