Top Khmer Rouge leader detained

Khieu Samphan is the fifth Khmer Rouge official to be detained

Police in Cambodia have arrested Khieu Samphan, the Khmer Rouge's former head of state, and taken him to a UN-backed genocide tribunal.

The elderly ex-leader was detained after he was released from hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh.

He is the fifth person to be targeted by the court, set up to bring surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge to the dock.

More than one million people are thought to have died between 1975 and 1979 under the brutal Maoist regime.

Close confidant

Khieu Samphan's arrest had been widely expected.

A former guerrilla fighter, he became the president of Democratic Kampuchea - as Cambodia was then known - after the Khmer Rouge came to power and was a close confidant of leader Pol Pot.

He has long claimed that his position was ceremonial and in a recently published book denied responsibility for policies to starve people and orders to carry out mass killings.

WHO WERE THE KHMER ROUGE? Maoist regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979 Founded and led by Pol Pot, (above) who died in 1998 Abolished religion, schools and currency in a bid to create agrarian utopia Brutal regime that did not tolerate dissent More than a million people thought to have died from starvation, overwork or execution

Last week, amid reports that his detention was imminent, he was flown to hospital in Phnom Penh after apparently suffering a stroke.

Early on Monday, police entered the hospital and drove the former leader to the special courts to appear before a panel of investigating judges.

His arrest completes the initial round-up of suspects by the tribunal, which was established last year after decades of delay.

Former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and wife Ieng Thirith, the social affairs minister, were arrested last week and charged with crimes against humanity.

Pol Pot's second-in command, Nuon Chea, and Kang Kek Ieu - known as Duch - the head of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, are also facing similar charges.

Their trials are expected to begin next year.

Under the Khmer Rouge, more than one million people died from starvation or overwork as leaders strove to create an agrarian utopia.

Hundreds of thousands of the educated middle-classes were tortured and executed in special centres.

Khmer Rouge founder Pol Pot died in 1998 and many fear that delays to the judicial process could mean that more of the regime's elderly leaders are never brought to justice.