Vancouver lawyer who prosecuted Khmer Rouge leaders welcomes genocide verdict
OTTAWA — A Vancouver lawyer who helped prosecute two of the Khmer Rouge’s most senior surviving leaders is breathing a little easier after a tribunal this week found the two elderly Cambodian men guilty of genocide and other crimes.
Dale Lysak says he has been waiting more than a year for the joint UN-Cambodian tribunal’s ruling against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, and that the verdict ensures some accountability for one of recent history’s worst atrocities.
“I’m very satisfied,” Lysak said in an interview. “I’ve been waiting for over a year to get the judgment on this trial and it feels great.”
An estimated two million Cambodians were killed during a bloody four-year period after the Communist-inspired movement known as the Khmer Rouge took over the poor Southeast Asian country in 1975.