Khmer Rouge ‘brother number two’ dies

Khmer Rouge 'brother number two' Nuon Chea died yesterday aged 93, a spokesman for the Cambodia tribunal where he was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity told AFP. The cause of his death was not given. The reign of terror led by "Brother Number 1" Pol Pot left some two million Cambodians dead from overwork, starvation and mass executions from 1975 to 1979. But Nuon Chea, considered the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologue, was not arrested until 2007. He and other senior members of the ultra-Maoist group were put on trial at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. The UN-backed court sentenced him to life in prison last year after he was found guilty of genocide against the ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslim minority group. Pol Pot passed away in 1998 without facing court.