Revisiting the Killing Fields

Nuon Chea often said he was ready to face up to his past. As the Khmer Rouge leader dubbed Brother No. 2 (behind Cambodia's tyrannical Pol Pot), he said that he did not fear the prospect of being imprisoned for war crimes. "They can keep my body in jail," Nuong Chea once proclaimed, "but my conscience will have served my nation and my people."

Now the country's most senior surviving Khmer Rouge leader is having that bravado put to the test. On Wednesday, Cambodian police finally surrounded Nuon Chea's home and arrested the 82-year-old on charges of crimes against humanity. He has denied the charges and his trial for his role in the communist regime that left an estimated 1.7 million dead between 1975 and 1979 could begin next year.

The arrest is a landmark event in Cambodia's troubled history. Many genocide researchers say he actually played a greater role than Pol Pot in the regime's executions—but until now Brother No. 2 was living proof of the Southeast Asian country's failure to confront its brutal past. His detention seems to indicate that Cambodia's U.N.-backed trial of senior Khmer Rouge leaders may finally take place.

"[Cambodian officials] have to show forward movement—the [trial] is bogging out," says Peter Maguire, professor of history at Bard College and author of the 2005 book "Facing Death in Cambodia" (Columbia University Press). "It's taken them more time to get a court up and running than it took to try every single Japanese and German war criminal after World War II."

Nuon Chea was arrested at home in a forest clearing near the town of Pailin, more than 200 miles from the capital of Phnom Penh and just feet away from the Thai border. Three years ago, I interviewed him at that house after showing up at his front steps with his doctor, my translator and a box of mangosteen fruit. Then 78 and frail in a tattered shirt and loose red trousers, he welcomed us into his wooden, stilted house. He was still highly regarded by former Khmer Rouge supporters in that area and showed few regrets about his past. In our hourlong interview he characterized himself as a patriot, told us he was disappointed people died under the Khmer Rouge, but said that his crime was carelessness, not genocide.

Born to a wealthy Chinese-Cambodian family, Nuon Chea dropped out of law school in Thailand some 50 years ago to join the communist guerrilla movement. As deputy secretary-general of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, he oversaw all of the party's organizations and helped direct the national-security police. The Khmer Rouge evacuated cities, abolished money and markets and forced everyone into slave labor. Cambodians were forced to work in fields for up to 18 hours per day on starvation rations. Cadres murdered those caught scavenging food; others died of malnutrition and disease. Nuon Chea, however, was careful to tailor his comments about those days. He sat with us at his kitchen table, quoting from Einstein and French literature and speaking knowledgeably about current world politics. But he smiled and tried to change the subject when asked about his specific role in the Khmer Rouge.