Tuol Sleng prison photographer Nhem An Thursday apologizes publicly for the first time in 30 years, for his role in the Pol Pot regime.
The forty-seven-year old Udor Mean Chey's deputy governor was hired to be a photographer in Tuol Sleng, where nearly 20,000 Cambodians were tortured and killed.
On Thursday, Nhem An expresses his regrets to the thousands of lives that died in Cambodia’s darkest prison. Also, Nhem has agreed to testify in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as a witness at the torture site.
At the conference, hosted by the Cambodian Press Club and the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), Nhem told reporters that he was not directly involved in the killing or torture of the detainees. Instead, he asserted that he was simply carrying out orders to take photographs for former Khmer Rouge leaders.
Many of Toul Sleng's prisoners died from starvation, torture devices, and brutal killings. It is reported that over a dozen Tuol Sleng's victims have survived, after the regime was toppled in 1979.