Duch to be segregated from other prisoners

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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, July 5 (UPI) -- Kaing Guek Eav, sentenced to life in prison by a Khmer Rouge tribunal, will be housed in a specially built cell, Cambodian officials said.

The incarceration details were finalized last week between the tribunal's prosecutors and the Cambodian Interior Ministry, which is responsible for the detention of the former Khmer Rouge leader known as Duch, the Phnom Penh Post reported Wednesday.

A U.N.-backed tribunal trying Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leaders sentenced Duch, the brutal regime's prison chief, to life imprisonment in February. Duch was accused of running the S-21 "factory of death" detention facility where up to 15,000 inmates reportedly were tortured and executed in Cambodia's "killing fields."

Kuy Bunsorn, director-general of the general department of prisons at the Ministry of Interior, told the Post the cell at at Kandal Provincial Prison would be completed before the Khmer New Year.

"We built a separate cell for Duch because we can't keep Duch with the other prisoners," Bunsorn said. "This is to provide protection and security for him because he is a Khmer Rouge prisoner, so the crimes he committed are different from criminal cases or other cases of other prisoners" at the Kandal prison.

Duch is being held at the on-site detention facility at the tribunal in Choam Chao.

The Post said officials didn't know when Duch would be transferred to the penal facility.