Ieng Sary defected from the Khmer Rouge in 1996 as it began to fall apart, and was granted a pardon.

BBC: Khmer Rouge senior leader Ieng Sary dies

For example, Ieng Sary is said to have been personally responsible for summoning back Cambodian students and diplomats from abroad.

CNN: BIG BURDEN

But generous donations to Buddhist temples and the ruling party turned out to be not enough to shield Ieng Sary from justice.

ECONOMIST: Cambodia

And that is why the likes of Ieng Sary and Ta Mok are not the only veterans of the killing fields suddenly suffering from amnesia.

CNN: SELECTIVE MEMORIES

One is Ieng Sary, who was Pol Pot's foreign minister.

ECONOMIST: Cambodia

Also treated with respect was former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary, who received a limited royal pardon in 1996 and now lives peacefully in Pailin in western Cambodia.

CNN: BIG BURDEN

In 1996, Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk pardoned Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary for his role in the "killing fields" era of the 1970s when about a million Cambodians were slain.

CNN: Monday,

Two years ago, the king, under pressure from the Cambodian government, pardoned Ieng Sary, who had once been Pol Pot's foreign minister, but had more recently become a useful go-between in arranging defections.

ECONOMIST: Cambodia

Ieng Sary was known as a strong believer in the Khmer Rouge's extremist revolutionary ideas, and was often described as a duplicitous and manipulative man, the BBC's South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head reports.

BBC: Khmer Rouge senior leader Ieng Sary dies

But his close associate and relation, Ieng Sary, who held the post of deputy prime minister and foreign minister in his regime, is very much alive and a prominent personality in Phnom Penh, the capital.

ECONOMIST: Justice is slow to catch up with the former Khmers Rouges

In 1979, a Vietnamese-convened court sentenced Pol Pot and his foreign minister, Ieng Sary, to death in absentia, but the process was so hurried and flawed that even their own defense lawyer called for the death penalty.

CNN: SELECTIVE MEMORIES

In 1996 Ieng Sary, the regime's former Deputy Premier, was the first major cadre to defect to the government--strengthening Hun Sen's hand in his power struggle with then co-Premier Norodom Ranariddh--and was granted an official amnesty in return.

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