Khmer Rouge co-founder Ieng Sary dies

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Ieng Sary, who co-founded the communist Khmer Rouge regime responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s, and who decades later became one of its few leaders to be put on trial, died Thursday before his case could be finished. He was 87.

Ieng Sary was the brother-in-law of late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. His death dashed hopes that he would be punished for his alleged crimes against humanity during his country's darkest chapter.

Chea Leang, a co-prosecutor at the Cambodian-international tribunal that had been trying Ieng Sary, said he died of cardiac failure. The trial began in late 2011 with four defendants and now has only two.

The regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, claimed it was building a pure socialist society by evicting people from cities to work in labor camps in the countryside. Its radical policies led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

Ieng Sary had suffered from high blood pressure and heart problems. -- AP