Prisoners in the notorious Khmer Rouge prison of Tuol Sleng received little or no medical attention, except for receiving occasional mild painkillers, a former nurse at the sight to a UN-backed court Monday.
Nam Mon, now 48, told the Khmer Rouge tribunal that she had no real training in medicine before she was sent to the prison, which was administered by Duch, currently facing an atrocity crimes trial.
“I learned and cured patience at the same time,” she said. “I didn’t know how to write the names of medicines, so I had to recognize and remember them by heart.”
Nam Mon was one of three nurses at the prison, where prosecutors say 12,380 people were brutally tortured and later to their deaths.
“There were some treatments for prisoners in S-21,” Nam Mon said, referring to the prison by its Khmer Rouge code. But the treatment only included “paracetamol and aspirin.”