Ieng Sary (24 October 1925-14 March 2013) was the third-in-command of the Communist Party of Kampuchea under Pol Pot and Nuon Chea during the Cambodian Civil War and the Democratic Kampuchea regime.
Biography[]
Ieng Sary was born in Tra Vinh Province, French Indochina in 1925, the son of a Cambodian father and a mother of mixed Chinese and Vietnamese descent. He studied together with Pol Pot in Paris and became one of his lieutenants, and he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in 1960. He was one of the Khmer Rouge leaders during the Cambodian Civil War and served as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976 to 1979, serving as Pol Pot's third-in-command. He was sentenced to death after the Khmer Rouge was overthrown in 1979, but he was pardoned by Norodom Sihanouk in 1993. On 12 November 2007, he was arrested at his opulent Phnom Penh villa and charged with crimes against humanity, but he died in 2013 before his case's conclusion.