Nuon Chea

Phnom Penh, Sept. 19 (Reuters): Khmer Rouge “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s top surviving henchman, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity today by the UN-backed “Killing Fields” tribunal.

A court spokesman said the octogenarian communist guerrilla had been placed behind bars in the compound of the $56 million court after a short hearing before Cambodian and international judges.

Nuon Chea, who has been living as a free man since cutting a deal with Phnom Penh in 1998, was arrested at dawn by Cambodian special forces soldiers and western security guards who surrounded his small wooden home in a forest on the Thai border.

He was questioned inside the house for a short time before being taken away by military helicopter and flown to Phnom Penh. “My dad seems to have no worries, but my mother is worried about him,” his son, Nuon Say, said.

Papers and photographs were also seized from the house, Nuon Chea’s home since he and the final remnants of Pol Pot’s ultra-Maoist guerrilla army surrendered in December 1998. “They confiscated the documents written by my dad about the Khmer Rouge,” Nuon Say said. “They took all the photos from his home before they put him into vehicle and flew him off to Phnom Penh.”