'Comrade Duch,' Infamous Commander Of Khmer Rouge Prison, Dies In Cambodia

The commander of a notorious Khmer Rouge prison where thousands of people were executed and tortured during the communist regime's brutal rule over Cambodia in the 1970s, has died at age 77.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Comrade Duch, was serving life in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity when he died early Wednesday, according to a spokesman for the tribunal that found him guilty in 2010.

He had been ill for years, and the spokesman provided no details on the cause of death.

Duch led the regime's Tuol Sleng prison, code-named S-21. He was one of the few Khmer Rouge officials to admit any responsibility for the 1975-79 genocide that ultimately left 1.7 million Cambodians dead from execution, overwork or starvation.

Only a handful of inmates survived their time in Tuol Sleng, a fact that he himself acknowledged during his war crimes trial. An estimated 14,000 people died there during the Khmer Rouge rule, some of them regime officials accused of disloyalty.