Near Phnom Penh the trial of Comrade Duch, the director of Toul Sleng or S-21 the high school converted into a prison and torture facility, is ongoing. Since the Pol Pot regime Duch (pronounced d-oi-k-h) has converted to Christianity and has confessed to his crimes. He is accused of masterminding the murder of more than 12,000 adults and at least 1,000 children.

During the trial Duch has been a clever defendant. Apparently wishing to avoid a life sentence for his crimes, he admits he administered the facility which is now a museum but that he had little to do with the day to day running of the prison. In fact, he says he was rarely at the prison.

When confronted by the prosecutors about the murders of the one thousand or more children prisoners, Duch demured saying he didn't realize that every single child who entered the facility died, most by having their skulls dashed against trees at a rural mass graveyard. If you go to Toul Sleng there is room on room of photos of those who lived and later died there or at Choung Ek, the killing field. Several walls of the photos are of children who have already been tortured or who don't know their fate and stare blankly at the camera.

One of seven survivors, a man named Nath has been testifying all week. Nath was chosen as an artist to paint pictures of Pol Pot and of other Khmer Rouge leaders. It is his post-incarceration paintings of the various tortures and of the facilities and prisoners that most clearly indicts Duch.

Yet, when Duch is confronted about the various forms of torture that Nath portrays in his paintings he demures saying that he wasn't around for the inhumanity.

By the way, one of Nath's best known works is of a mass waterboarding of prisoners. The painting shows prisoners chained down and a room flooded until their heads were coverd with water. Just as the prisoners begin to drown the water is released from the room and the prisoners revived. If it was torture at Toul Sleng under Pol Pot, how can it not be torture at Abu Ghraib and at other facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan under George Bush?