--- title: How Pol Pot died url: https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/pol-pot/ description: Pol Pot died in Khmer Rouge custody in 1998, nine months after a rival faction tried him before a crowd and a foreign reporter, and the only evidence of… section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: a dossier collage of a vintage television wall broadcasting archival news footage, surrounded by press clippings and film reels.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/hero-watch-briefs.jpg) [Regimes](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/) / [How they died](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/) # How Pol Pot died At a glance Pol Pot died at about 10 pm on 15 April 1998 while held by his own former commanders, and the cause is not independently established. - **Leader:** Pol Pot - **Died:** 15 April 1998 - **Place:** A Khmer Rouge camp in the Dangrek mountains near Anlong Veng, northern Cambodia, close to the Thai border - **Cause:** Reported as heart failure by Khmer Rouge officials; a later report of suicide by overdose is disputed; no autopsy was done - **Regime:** [Democratic Kampuchea under Pol Pot](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/democratic-kampuchea/) On this page - [The final days](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/pol-pot/#the-final-days) - [The death](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/pol-pot/#the-death) - [What happened to the body](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/pol-pot/#what-happened-to-the-body) - [How the death was announced and used](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/pol-pot/#how-the-death-was-announced-and-used) - [Timeline](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/pol-pot/#timeline) - [Same-standard note](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/pol-pot/#same-standard-note) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/pol-pot/#sources) **In one line:** Pol Pot died in Khmer Rouge custody in 1998, nine months after a rival faction tried him before a crowd and a foreign reporter, and the only evidence of the cause is what his captors, Thai officers and one journalist reported. ## The final days By 1997 the Khmer Rouge movement was split. In July 1996 forces in the west under Ieng Sary had broken with Pol Pot's northern headquarters at Anlong Veng. Nate Thayer of the *Far Eastern Economic Review* reported that Ta Mok's loyalists were negotiating a deal with the royalist Funcinpec commander Nhiek Bun Chhay, that Pol Pot opposed it, and that by May the faction had agreed in principle. On the night of 9 June 1997, Thayer wrote, Defence Minister Son Sen and 14 relatives were shot dead on Pol Pot's order, according to the Khmer Rouge general Khem Nuon and intelligence sources. Thayer's 1998 article gives the toll as Son Sen, his wife and 16 relatives, with bodies run over by trucks. The first public report came on 13 June 1997, when the Associated Press quoted First Premier Norodom Ranariddh saying that Khmer Rouge guerrillas shot Son Sen on Pol Pot's orders; the date of the killings and the number of dead differ between sources. Ta Mok's men trapped Pol Pot on 15 June and he surrendered by 19 June, Khem Nuon said. On 25 July 1997 the movement staged a "people's tribunal" at Anlong Veng. Thayer and the cameraman David McKaige of Asiaworks Television were admitted, and ABC News *Nightline* broadcast the footage on 28 to 30 July. About 500 people chanted "Crush! Crush! Crush! Pol Pot and his murderous clique!" The sentence, as he quoted it, was: "we all decide to condemn and sentence this clique to life imprisonment." The charges were the killing of Son Sen, the detention of Ta Mok and Nuon Chea, and blocking the Funcinpec deal, not the 1975 to 1979 killings. The tribunal ruled out handing him to an international court, Thayer reported. Who staged it is disputed. Khem Nuon said Pol Pot "consented" to the reporter's presence. Thayer reported that Hun Sen "has claimed the entire tribunal was stage-managed by Pol Pot himself." The scholar who wrote the 2022 *International Criminal Law Review* study of the event calls it "a purge and not a trial." In October 1997 Thayer interviewed Pol Pot, who said: "Look at me. Am I a savage person?" By late March 1998 mutinies and a government offensive had cost the Khmer Rouge Anlong Veng, and Pol Pot was being moved from camp to camp, with little food, according to Ta Mok and his wife. ## The death According to Ta Mok and Pol Pot's wife, speaking to Thayer the next day, Pol Pot was waiting to be moved to another house on the night of 15 April 1998 when he felt tired and lay down. Ta Mok said: "It was at 10:15 last night." His wife, named Muon in Thayer's report and Mea Son in the 2022 study, said: "Last night, he said he felt dizzy. I asked him to lie down. I heard him make a noise. When I went to touch him, he had died." Thayer had reported in 1997 that guerrilla officials acknowledged serious heart disease and high blood pressure. At 8 pm that evening the Voice of America Khmer service had reported Thayer's story that Khmer Rouge leaders had decided to hand Pol Pot to an international tribunal. Khem Nuon told Thayer: "We thought the shock of him hearing this on VOA might have killed him." Ta Mok said: "Pol Pot died of heart failure. I did not kill him." Other claims, each attributed to its source: - In January 1999 Thayer reported that Pol Pot took a lethal mix of Valium and chloroquine on learning of a plan to hand him to the United States (The Independent, 21 January 1999). He added that Ta Mok had contacted US officials on 25 March 1998 and been refused. Thayer examined the body about 14 hours after death and wrote: "There was no visible evidence that the former Cambodian dictator was murdered." He is not a physician, and no autopsy was done. A Thai army team without a doctor examined the body on 17 April. Colonel Ruangporn Rojanarod said: "we have no medical capacity to say that he died of heart failure or not." ## What happened to the body The Khmer Rouge let journalists see Pol Pot's body to prove he was dead. Thayer saw it in a wooden hut and described "purple blotches" on face and fingers. On 16 April journalists were allowed to photograph and film it. The Thai team took hair, fingerprints and photographs of the teeth and old surgical scars. Blocks of ice were placed around the body, partly wrapped in plastic. ![A low mound of dark ash and earth edged with a row of upturned glass bottles and flowering plants, beneath a corrugated iron roof on wooden posts](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/endings/pol-pot-2.jpg) The cremation place near Anlong Veng, photographed on 4 April 2011 by Gonzo Gooner (CC BY 3.0). Pol Pot's body was burned here on 18 April 1998. [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pol_Pot%27s_Cremation_Place_-_panoramio.jpg): Photograph by Gonzo Gooner (Panoramio), 4 April 2011; attribution required and given in the caption, CC BY 3.0. ![A fenced sandy plot with a small tin-roofed shelter, a low wooden table holding offerings and a red box, and a blue sign in Khmer script](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/endings/pol-pot-3.jpg) The gravesite in the Dangrek mountains, Anlong Veng district, photographed by Sun Narin for Voice of America Khmer on 6 April 2018, twenty years after his death. [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pol_Pot%27s_grave.jpg): Photograph by Sun Narin, Voice of America Khmer, 6 April 2018; source https://www.voacambodia.com/a/twenty-years-after-his-death-cambodians-still-struggle-to-put-memoreis-of-pol-pot-behind-them/4360948.html, Public domain (PD-USGov-VOA). The body was burned on a pyre of old tyres and scrap near the Thai border, with his bedding and belongings, on 18 April; The New York Times (Seth Mydans, 18 April 1998) gives the time as 9:52 am, and UPI and AP Video give the same date. UPI reported only Khmer Rouge captors present and "a simple Buddhist ceremony." The 2022 study says a dozen people attended, including a Thai officer and a few invited journalists, and "there was no ritual, no ceremony." Non Nou, a Khmer Rouge official who spoke to reporters at the border, was quoted: "there is no more Khmer Rouge, no more bad reputation." The New York Times reported that his widow and their 14-year-old daughter did not attend, nor did the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders. The site later became a small shrine where some villagers burn incense, and a Voice of America report in 2018 found a sign reading "Pol Pot was cremated here." Voice of America also photographed a grave site nearby. ![Illustration: a shortwave radio transmitter hall with antenna towers, frequency charts and broadcast logs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/graphics/shortwave-hall.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object ## How the death was announced and used The Khmer Rouge announced the death and invited the press. Thayer wrote that they wanted "to prove to the world" he was dead. Ta Mok used it to separate himself: "It is good that Pol Pot is dead. I feel no sorrow," and "Pol Pot was a Vietnamese agent. I have the documents." He said the world "should stop talking about this now that Pol Pot is dead." Khmer Rouge envoys met Defence Minister Tea Banh in Bangkok and, they said, US officials, who declined comment. ![A white-haired man in glasses sits with his hands clasped in a courtroom, a uniformed guard standing behind him and lawyers in the foreground](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/endings/pol-pot-1.jpg) The courtroom of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia at the pronouncement of the Case 002/01 judgement, 7 August 2014. The court tried other Khmer Rouge leaders after Pol Pot's death; its Flickr record names no individuals. [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Case_002-01_Pronouncement_of_the_verdict_(14825899426).jpg): Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, 7 August 2014, via Flickr (krtribunal, https://www.flickr.com/photos/krtribunal/14825899426/) and Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. The Cambodian government accepted the pictures but not the proof. Khieu Kanarith, secretary of state for information, said: "We saw only the photographs, not by ourselves. There has been no autopsy," and "We want the body for autopsy or they can hand it over to any independent medical team." The US State Department spokesman, James Rubin, said Washington agreed with Prime Minister Hun Sen that the body should be autopsied, the Irish Times reported. Reuters reported on 17 April that pictures of the body had yet to be shown on Cambodian television and that, with many newspapers on a new year break, only one reported the death on Friday. King Sihanouk said: "Let him be dead. Now our nation will be very peaceful." The UN Secretary-General's spokesman said the death "rules out the possibility of his trial under international law." President Clinton said that "senior Khmer Rouge, who exercised leadership from 1975 to 1979, are still at large and share responsibility for the monstrous human rights abuses committed during this period." ## Timeline - 9 June 1997: Son Sen and relatives killed (date and toll differ between sources; first reported on 13 June). - 15 to 19 June 1997: Pol Pot trapped and taken by Ta Mok's forces. - 25 July 1997: "People's tribunal" at Anlong Veng; life sentence. - 16 October 1997: Thayer interviews Pol Pot. - Late March 1998: Anlong Veng falls; Pol Pot moved north. - 15 April 1998: Death at about 10 pm; Voice of America reports the planned handover earlier that evening. - 16 to 17 April 1998: Journalists see the body; Thai team examines it. - 18 April 1998: Cremation. - 21 January 1999: Thayer reports the overdose account. ## Same-standard note This page separates what the Khmer Rouge, Thai officers and the Cambodian government each said, and marks claims of the cause as claims. It differs from pages on leaders who died in office or in bed: Pol Pot died in the custody of former subordinates, with no autopsy and with only the faction that held him as the main source. That is a difference of circumstance, not a verdict. ## Sources Journalism: Nate Thayer, "Pol Pot: The End", *Far Eastern Economic Review*, 7 August 1997 (https://dinmerican.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/pol-pot-the-end-by-nate-thayer/); Thayer, "Dying Breath", *Far Eastern Economic Review*, 30 April 1998 (https://natethayer.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/dying-breath-the-inside-story-of-pol-pots-last-days-and-the-disintegration-of-the-movement-he-created/); *The Irish Times*, 18 April 1998 (https://www.irishtimes.com/news/cambodian-authorities-demand-post-mortem-on-pol-pot-body-1.143445); UPI, "Pol Pot cremated", 18 April 1998 (https://www.upi.com/Archives/1998/04/18/Pol-Pot-cremated/6428892872000/); Voice of America Khmer, 15 April 2018 (https://www.voacambodia.com/a/twenty-years-after-his-death-cambodians-still-struggle-to-put-memoreis-of-pol-pot-behind-them/4360948.html). Further: Associated Press, 13 June 1997, via Deseret News (https://www.deseret.com/1997/6/13/19317672/chief-khmer-rouge-executioner-executed/); Seth Mydans, "At Cremation of Pol Pot, No Tears Shed", *The New York Times*, 18 April 1998 (as hosted by the author at https://sethmydans.com/At_cremation.html); Reuters, 17 April 1998, via Deseret News (https://www.deseret.com/1998/4/17/19375080/many-cambodians-sorry-pol-pot-escaped-justice/). Scholarship: "Crush! Crush! Crush!: Towards a Finished Story of Pol Pot's Trial and Death?", *International Criminal Law Review* 22 (2022) (https://brill.com/view/journals/icla/22/1-2/article-p261_261.xml). Official: UN Secretary-General's spokesman, SG/SM/6526, 17 April 1998 (https://press.un.org/en/1998/19980417.sgsm6526.html).