Vann Nath, 65, an artist who was one of only a handful of survivors of the Khmer Rouge torture center Tuol Sleng and who lived to testify two years ago at the trial of his jailer, died of cardiac arrest on Monday in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Shackled and tortured along with other prisoners when he was arrested at the end of 1977, Vann Nath was spared by his jailers to paint portraits of the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot. His more recent paintings of scenes of torture now hang on the walls of Tuol Sleng, now a museum. Just 14 prisoners are known to have survived Tuol Sleng, where at least 14,000 people were sent to their deaths, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a repository of Khmer Rouge records. Altogether 1.7 million people died during the Khmer Rouge rule, from 1975 to 1979.
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