Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea sentenced to ‘life in prison’

Death: A man cleaning a skull near a mass grave at a former camp run by the Khmer Rouge in this file picture. — AP

PHNOM PENH: Two top leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime were found guilty of genocide, in a landmark ruling almost 40 years after the fall of a brutal regime that presided over the deaths of a quarter of the population.

The Khmer Rouge’s former head of state Khieu Samphan, 87, and “Brother Number 2” Nuon Chea, 92, are the two most senior living members of the ultra-Maoist group that seized control of Cambodia from 1975-1979.