As 82- year-old Nuon Chea was facing questioning in the Khmer Rouge tribunal courts Wednesday, his wife and family members remained in Pailin, unworried.
Seng Ly, the wife of Pol Pot's notorious deputy, said she was not shocked by the detention of Nuon Chea Wednesday morning, and she echoed statements the former Khmer Rouge architect had said himself, that he will face the courts and give his version of the truth.
That truth will be that the Khmer Rouge were defending Cambodia's sovereignty from aggressive Vietnamese and US interests, intent on the destruction of the Khmer people, Seng Ly said.
"I want him to go to the court and tell the truth, to make it clear," Seng Ly told VOA Khmer Wednesday.
She was unaware of the number of people killed during the reign of Democratic Kampuchea, the formal name of the insular communist movement that became known around the world as the Khmer Rouge, and would not talk "just to talk," she said.
"Who was the aggressor on whom?" she said. "Who encroached on Cambodian territory; who killed the Khmer people? I want justice for Democratic Kampuchea, and that the aggressor should not be free—those who dropped bombs and killed tens of thousands of people and went free and put all the blame on the Khmer Rouge."