DHAKA: Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes tribunal is to deliver its verdict in the trial of the last two surviving top Khmer Rouge leaders.

Nuon Chea, 88, and Khieu Samphan, 83, are charged with crimes against humanity.

The verdict comes more than three decades after the Maoist regime's fall.

Up to two million people are believed to have died under the Khmer Rouge - from starvation and overwork or executed as enemies of the state.

To date, no top-level leader has faced justice. The Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.

Prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment for the pair.

The case against the men has been split into two trials to speed up proceedings because of their age. A separate trial, for genocide, has just got under way.

The Khmer Rouge was in power from 1975-1979. Driven by Maoist ideology, it sought to create an agrarian society.

Cities were emptied and their residents forced to work on rural co-operatives. Many were worked to death while others starved as the economy imploded, reports BBC.

During four violent years, the Khmer Rouge also killed all those it perceived as enemies - intellectuals, minorities, former officials - and their families.

Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's second in command, was seen an ideological driving force within the regime. Khieu Samphan was its official head of state.

Prosecutors have argued that they formulated policy and were complicit in its brutal execution.

Both men denied the charges against them. In closing statements last year, they expressed remorse but said they had neither ordered deaths nor been aware of them. 

BDST: 0905 HRS, AUG 07, 2014