The former Khmer Rouge "First Lady" launched an angry tirade at Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal on Tuesday, telling her accusers they would be "cursed to the seventh circle of hell." Ieng Thirith, 76, facing trial for crimes against humanity under the communist regime, at first told the court that defence lawyers would speak on her behalf during her appeal against detention, saying: "I am too weak."
But she later erupted at the prosecution's suggestion that she was aware of atrocities at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison while she served as social affairs minister during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 rule. "Don't accuse me of being a murderer, otherwise you will be cursed to the seventh circle of hell," Ieng Thirith said in an 15-minute outburst.
"I don't know why a good person is accused of such crimes and I have suffered a great deal and I cannot really be patient because I have been wrongly accused," she said. Alternating between English and Khmer, she said that "everything was done by Nuon Chea," the regime's ideologue who is also among the five top cadres facing trial at the tribunal over the regime's atrocities. "I know what he (Nuon Chea) has done... He killed people," she said.
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