Saloth Sar was born in 1925 and is better known as Pol Pot. He studied in France from 1949 to 1954 before becoming “Brother Number One“ of the Khmer Rouge and ruling Cambodia from 1976 to 1979.

A communist ideologue, his political doctrine of purification was responsible for the death of one and a half million Cambodians. The war in Vietnam provoked the downfall of his government a few years later. The Khmer Rouge confined him to his residence after his trial in 1997, accusing him of murdering his designated successor and right hand man, Son Sen.

He died of a heart attack in 1998 after learning that the Khmer Rouge were going to deliver him to an international tribunal. As he was cremated, a post-mortem to rule out suicide proved impossible.