Prosecutors at the UN-backed Cambodia Tribunal have demanded a 40-year jail sentence for comrade Duch, who ran the Khmer Rouge's notorious Tuol Sleng prison.

Duch ran Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, and least 15,000 Cambodians were tortured and then murdered at the facility. He has been charged with torture, premeditated murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
 

Judges heard closing arguments from both sides in this first trial investigating the atrocities committed between 1975 and 1979 by Cambodia's Communist Khmer Rouge regime. At least 2 million people died by torture, murder, starvation and exhaustion as Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a rural communist state. The period is now known as The Killing Fields.
 

The trial of four other Khmer Rouge leaders, including former president Khieu Samphan, is expected to start in 2001.