pol pat - Pol Pot (May 19, 1925 – April 16, 1998), who was the ruler of the Khmer Rouge and the Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1976 to 1979, instigated an aggressive policy of relocating people to the countryside in an attempt to purify the Cambodian people as a step toward a communist future. Today the excesses of his government are widely blamed for causing the deaths of up to three million Cambodians. He was arrested by Khmer Rouge military chief Ta Mok in 1997 and was subjected to a show trial for the death of his lifelong right-hand man Son Sen. He was sentenced to a lifelong house arrest. On the night of April 15, 1998 the Voice of America, of which Pol Pot was a devoted listener, announced that the Khmer Rouge had agreed to turn him over to an international tribunal. According to his wife, he died in his bed later in the night while waiting to be moved to another location. Ta Mok claimed that his death was due to heart failure.