By Ek Madra
CHOEUNG EK, Cambodia (Reuters) - The chief torturer underthe Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" regime wept and prayed onTuesday as he led the judges who will try him for crimesagainst humanity around the mass graves for some of itsvictims.
Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, accompanied 80 judges,lawyers and other officials of a U.N.-backed tribunal to the129 graves, uncovered after a Vietnamese invasion sent theKhmer Rouge back to the jungles in 1979.
"I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rougesoldiers smashed children to death," a policeman told reportersafter the four-hour tour.
"He cried and apologised to the victims" in the formerricefields outside Phnom Penh, he said.
Stacks of excavated skulls mark the area.
Some of the victims were from the regime's S-21 prison atthe former Tuol Sleng high school in Phnom Penh run by Duch,now 66.
About 14,000 people -- including a few foreigners accusedof being CIA spies -- went into the jail to be tortured intoconfessing to working against a regime deemed responsible forthe deaths of 1.7 million people.
Only a handful emerged alive.
"Duch expressed his sadness and shed tears two to threetimes," tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said. "He held hispalms together to pay respect to the victims in front of theshrine of skulls."
Duch, the first senior Khmer Rouge official to be detained,was to lead court officials on a tour of Tuol Sleng onWednesday.
"This is just one more piece in building a case file. Itcan be very useful in court to have a visual representation ofthe site in question," Australian court official Helen Jarvissaid.
Tuol Sleng is now a shrine to those killed by the KhmerRouge, who also eradicated potential opponents of their back to"Year Zero" revolution to produce an agrarian utopia throughoverwork, starvation and disease.
Detained in 1999 and now a Christian, Duch is expected tobe a key witness in the trials of "Brother Number Two" NuonChea, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's right hand man, KhieuSamphan, president under the regime, Ieng Sary, its foreignminister, and his wife.
"He could not have committed those crimes alone," Duchlawyer Kar Savuth said. "He took orders from the top leaders."
Many Cambodians want to hear what Duch will have to say intrials expected to start in July. The defendants face a maximumof life in prison.
"I still do not understand why Duch jailed me, killed mywife and our baby," said Chum Manh, 78, one of the fewsurvivors of Tuol Sleng.
Nuon Chea is accused of playing a central role inatrocities by the Khmer Rouge during their 1975-1979 rule,which they began by driving everyone out of the cities withwhatever they could carry.
He was arrested last year along with Ieng Sary and hiswife, lifelong friends of Pol Pot.
Pol Pot died in 1998 in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt ofAnlong Veng.
(Editing by Michael Battye and Sonya Hepinstall)
