Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge’s chief ideologist and second-in-command to leader Pol Pot, died on Sunday aged 93 at Khmer-Soviet Friendship hospital, according to a spokesman for the Cambodia tribunal, Neth Pheaktra.
Last month, Chea was taken to hospital for emergency treatment after reportedly suffering from an ulcer on a toe.
In November, Chea was convicted by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia of genocide against ethnic Vietnamese and the Cham Muslim minority group, as well as former officials in the previous Khmer Republic government.
Nuon Chea was born on 7 July 1926 in Voat Kor, French Indochina (present-day Cambodia). He served as the president of the Standing Committee of the Kampuchean People's Representative Assembly, as well as prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea in late 1970s.
Nuon Chea, known as "Brother Number Two", was considered the chief ideologist of the Khmer Rouge and second-in-command to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.
The Khmer Rouge was the name given to the Communist Party of Kampuchea that governed Cambodia from 1975 until 1979. Under the Khmer Rouge, the party’s leaders tortured and killed anyone whom they saw as an enemy: former officials, minorities, and intellectuals. The bloody period in the history of the Asian country resulted in the deaths of some 1.7 million people, or about a quarter of the Cambodian population. Khmer Rouge leaders have been held accountable over their atrocities that led to the genocide in the country.
