PHNOM PENH — The former "first lady" of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime died on Saturday, according to a UN-backed tribunal, without victims ever seeing her face trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Ieng Thirith, a French-educated revolutionary who was 83 when she died, was one of the few women in the leadership of the communist movement behind the horrors of the "Killing Fields" era.
She was one of just a handful of suspects charged by Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court, but was freed in 2012 when the case against her was suspended after the court ruled she was unfit to stand trial due to progressive dementia.
Family ties helped Ieng Thirith reach the upper echelons of power in a murderous totalitarian regime that tore children from parents and husbands from wives.
The sister-in-law of the late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, she served as the regime's social affairs minister alongside her husband, former foreign minister Ieng Sary.
Ieng Sary died in 2013 at age 87 while on trial for war crimes and genocide, cheating Cambodians of a ruling on his role in the regime's 1975-79 reign of terror.
At one point this year, Ieng Thirith had been admitted to hospital in Thailand with heart, bladder and lung problems.
In the end she died in Pailin province, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold on the border with Thailand were many regime leaders settled after they were ousted by the Vietnamese.
Her son Ieng Vuth is a deputy governor of the province.
"The accused passed away at approximately 10.30am on August 22 in Pailin, Cambodia," the UN-backed tribunal said in a statement.
"She was released under a regime of judicial supervision. She remained under judicial supervision until her death," the statement from the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) added.
Led by "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge dismantled modern society and wiped out nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population through starvation, overwork and execution in a bid to create an agrarian utopia.