Cambodia Khmer Rouge court upholds conviction in final ruling

Cambodia's UN-backed Khmer Rouge war crimes court gave its final verdict, upholding the genocide conviction and life sentence imposed on the regime's last surviving leader.

The tribunal was ruling on an appeal by Khieu Samphan, head of state for the murderous communist regime which wiped out a quarter of the Cambodian population in less than four years in the 1970s.

It is the last verdict that will be issued by the tribunal, which has cost more than $330 million and prosecuted only five Khmer Rouge leaders, two of whom died during proceedings.

"The Supreme Court chamber finds no merit in Khieu Samphan's arguments regarding genocide and rejects them," Chief Judge Kong Srim said in the lengthy ruling.

The court also upheld the 2018 convictions against the 91-year-old for multiple crimes against humanity -- including murder, torture and enslavement  -- on the basis of a "joint criminal enterprise", even if he did not personally take part in all crimes.

It backed the earlier ruling that Khieu Samphan had "direct contemporaneous knowledge of the commission of crimes and shared the intent for their commission".

But it reversed convictions on murder and persecution charges relating to two specific locations.

The hybrid court, with both Cambodian and international judges, was set up to try the senior leaders of the genocidal ultra-Maoist regime, which wiped out some two million people through starvation, torture, forced labour and mass executions during its 1975-79 rule.