A former administrator at the S-21 security center told the Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday that Vietnamese families were brought to the prison after attempting to flee Cambodia.
Testifying at the court for a second day, Suos Thy, who was responsible for keeping lists of inmates at the security center in Phnom Penh—where more than 15,000 prisoners are thought to have been sent to their deaths—said whole families were brought through the prison gates.
“For spouses and children, such cases did not happen often. Such cases happened mostly with Vietnamese people who were brought from Kompong Som,” Mr. Thy said, referring to what is now Preah Sihanouk province.
“Many of the people who were brought in together with their families were mostly those who tried to flee to another country.”
Mr. Thy said he was arrested following the regime’s collapse in 1984 after being wrongly accused of being the chief of S-21.
“I was arrested and placed in prison for about five years. I noticed it was five years because every week I made a map on the prison wall,” he said.
