Phnom Penh: The last surviving Khmer Rouge leader, Khieu Samphan, will launch his appeal on Monday against his life sentence. The appeal will be heard by the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers. Samphan is a former president of the Khmer Rouge, who was found guilty of genocide and various crimes against humanity in 2014 and 2018. He has expressed regret for his role in the Khmer Rouge, but has maintained that he was only a figurehead, and claims he knew nothing about the atrocities that were being committed.

More than two million people were killed during the 1975-1979 rule of Pol Pot's ultra-communist Khmer Rouge. People died from torture, execution, disease and starvation. Khieu Samphan was at the very top of the regime and was referred to as Pol Pot’s right-hand man. In 1998, he returned to Cambodia along with Nuon Chea, known as “Brother Number Two", under a 'no arrest' guarantee, but a decade later, in 2007, the pair were arrested and charged under the United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal.

In August 2014, alongside Nuon Chea, Samphan was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity, murder, persecution on political grounds and other inhumane acts over the forced evacuation of the capital in 1975. In November 2018, both men were found guilty of genocide against the Cham Muslim minority and Vietnamese people in a second trial, and again sentenced to life in prison.

Nuon Chea died in 2019, leaving Khieu Samphan the sole surviving Khmer Rouge leader to challenge the conviction. A challenge that will begin on Monday.