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Former Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea at the Phnom Penh court on November 16, 2018, in what should be the latest verdict in the Khmer Rouge trials. Mark Peters / ECCC / AFP

The ideologue and number two Khmer Rouge Nuon Chea died Sunday, August 4, at age 93, said a spokesman of the Cambodian court before which he was convicted for "genocide" and "crimes against humanity."

A tired old man, his eyes hidden behind huge dark glasses. This is one of the last known images of Nuon Chea during his trial.

First sentenced in 2014 to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, then in 2018 for genocide against Vietnamese and religious minorities like the Chams , Nuon Chea was the ideologue of the Khmer Rouge, a bloody dictatorship, of Maoist inspiration that killed some 2 million people between 1975 and 1979 in Cambodia. The goal was to erase any social class.

Thus the regime organized the forced displacement of millions of townspeople in the countryside to make them work in extreme conditions.

Nuon Chea, arrested in 2007, is one of the few Khmer Rouge leaders, along with Kieu Samphan, to have been tried and convicted . Pol Pot, perhaps the best-known figure in the regime, died in 1998 without being disturbed by justice.

► To read also: Cambodia: in the labyrinth of memory of the Khmer Rouge