Former Khmer Rouge commander Chhouk Rin, sentenced to life in prison for a 1994 train attack that left 13 Cambodians and three Western backpackers dead, said Wednesday that he is seriously ill and has been bedridden for the past 10 days.
“I can’t walk out of my home, but I can move around my bed,” Chhouk Rin said by telephone from his home in Kep municipality’s Phnom Voar village.
The illness has caused him to lose 10 kg recently, he added.
Chhouk Rin is suffering from a tetanus reaction, said friends who recently sent him food and medicine.
He eats little, they said, and looks weak and very thin.
Relatives of the dead backpackers appealed the Phnom Penh Municipal Court’s decision in 2000 to acquit Chhouk Rin of charges stemming from the attack, prompting a new trial.
The Appeals Court then found him guilty of leading the attack and gave him a life sentence in 2002.
Chhouk Rin’s lawyers appealed that decision and were granted a retrial, but the court upheld its life sentence last November.
Last month, Chhouk Rin appealed to the Supreme Court. A court date has not been set. He is out of jail awaiting the outcome of his appeal.
The former rebel maintains his innocence.
He says he turned over the three Westerners—an Australian, a Briton and a Frenchman—to his superiors in October 1994, when he joined the government.
Chhouk Rin said he should be freed based on a 1994 law offering immunity to rebels who defected to the government within six months of the law’s passage.
Now the former Khmer Rouge commander cannot walk on his own strength, his doctor, Ouch Noun, said Wednesday.
“If he wants to go somewhere, we need to carry him,” Ouch Noun said, adding that his health has deteriorated since he was given a life sentence.
The doctor said that Chhouk Rin told him: “If I am imprisoned for life, I would rather die.”
