PHNOM PENH, Cambodia Prosecutors for Cambodias U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal appealed Monday for a longer sentence for the former chief jailer of the Khmer Rouge.
Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity but was sentenced last month to just 19 years in prison.
A statement by the prosecutors said the judgment gives insufficient weight to the gravity of Duchs crimes and his role and his willing participation in those crimes.
The tribunal is seeking justice for the estimated 1.7 million people who died from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition as a result of the radical policies of the 1975-79 communist Khmer Rouge regime.
Duch pronounced DOIK was the first defendant to be tried. He supervised a prison where as many as 16,000 people were tortured before being executed.
Also found guilty of torture and murder, Duch was originally sentenced to 35 years. Time served reduced the sentence 11 years, and he was compensated five years for illegal detention in a military prison. The length of the sentence was widely criticized.
Prosecutors argued that mitigating circumstances were given undue weight and added their view was that Duch should be separately convicted of the crimes against humanity of enslavement, imprisonment, torture, rape, extermination, and other inhumane acts.
The appeal was filed Monday, and the prosecutors statement said substantive arguments supporting it would be filed within the required 60 days.
Four more defendants are expected to go on trial early next year: Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge ideologist; Khieu Samphan, its former head of state; Ieng Sary, its foreign minister; and his wife Ieng Thirith, who was minister for social affairs.
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