PHNOM PENH: CAMBODIA`S UN-backed tribunal on Thursday indicted four former Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the regime`s most senior surviving member.

`Brother Number Two` Nuon Chea, who served as deputy to Khmer Rouge founder Pol Pot, will stand trial alongside former foreign minister Ieng Sary, social affairs minister Ieng Thirith and head of state Khieu Samphan.

The court has decided to `send forward these four accused for trial`, judge You Bunleng said at a press conference, before listing a long series of charges against the former top regime members, including torture, murder and rape.

Led by `Brother Number One` Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Marxist regime emptied the cities and abolished money and schools in the late 1970s in a bid to create an agrarian utopia, wiping out nearly a quarter of the country`s population before they were ousted from the capital by Vietnamese forces.

The trial, expected in 2011, will be the court`s second, following the sentencing of former prison chief Duch, real name Kaing Guek Eav, in July for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The 67-year-old was given a jail term of 30 years for his role overseeing the executions of an estimated 15,000 men, women and children, but could walk free in 19 years given time already served, to the dismay of survivors.

The four newly indicted leaders have been in detention since their arrests in 2007 in connection with the regime`s bloody rule over Cambodia from 1975-79, when up to two million people died from starvation, overwork or execution. The genocide charges relate specifically to the deaths of Vietnamese people and ethnic Cham Muslims under the regime.

BDST: 1855 HRS, September 16, 2010