Ieng Thirith, Khmer Rouge ‘first lady’, dies

Ieng Thirith, the sister-in-law of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, died on Saturday, almost five years after she was indicted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, Cambodia’s U.N.-backed war crimes court said.

Ieng Thirith, a French-educated revolutionary who died at 83, was one of the few women in the leadership of the communist movement during the horrors of the “Killing Fields” era.

Ieng Thirith was put on trial by a United Nations-backed tribunal seeking justice for crimes committed by the radical movement, but freed in September 2012 before its conclusion after being declared mentally unfit.

Family ties helped Ieng Thirith reach the upper echelons of power in a murderous totalitarian regime that tore children from parents and husbands from wives.

Known as the “first lady” of the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Thirith served as the minister of social action during the regime’s bloody, four-year rule.

Ieng Sary died in 2013 at age 87 while on trial for war crimes and genocide, cheating Cambodians of a ruling on his role in the regime’s 1975-79 reign of terror.

In the end she passed away in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold on the border with Thailand where many regime leaders settled after they were ousted by the Vietnamese.

Her son, Ieng Vuth, said she had been suffering from dementia, heart problems and other health issues.

“The prosecutor will make an examination of Ieng Thirith’s body to know clearly whether her death was caused by nature and the prosecutor will hand a report to the Extraordinary Chamber about her death”, he said.

The two – Nuon Chea, the regime’s chief ideologist and No. 2 leader, and Khieu Samphan, a former head of state – are now in a second trial also related to charges of genocide.

A Maoist-inspired communist regime, the Khmer Rouge sought to launch an agrarian revolution in Cambodia.

Ieng Thirith graduated from the Lycee Sisowath in Phnom Penh before going to France for university, where she studied Shakespeare, according to the ECCC.

After returning to Cambodia in 1957, she worked as a professor and founded a private English school in the capital, Phnom Penh.

The group’s leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.

In the 1960s, she joined an underground circle of Cambodian leftists, and eventually followed her husband into the jungle in 1965, fleeing a harsh bout of government repression.

She ordered purges of suspected traitors in her ministry who were sent to re-education camps, and was aware of the regime’s killing of perceived enemies, according to court documents.