They included the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie; the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a k a Carlos the Jackal; and Cambodia's Khmer Rouge head of state, Khieu Samphan.
Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head of state whose arrest by a United Nations-backed genocide tribunal has been widely anticipated, suffered a stroke, his daughter and a neighbor said.
More recently Vergès defended the former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, arguing that the deaths of up to 2 million Cambodians in the 1970s did not amount to genocide.
In a raid on his small wooden house at the edge of a rice field, the authorities found 399 stolen artifacts -- Buddha heads, Khmer statues, bits of carved lintels and porticos -- some lying openly in his courtyard, some submerged in the three ponds that surround it.
As the narrative unfolds, the Khmer offer the heads of their now vanquished enemies to the king.
Another legend narrated is linked to the six Khmer bronze statues (three lions with heads substituted later in Burmese style, a three-headed elephant known as Airavata, and two warriors in the form of Shiva), which are installed in the temple in the northern end of the courtyard.
I strongly believe in working with the community but over the years there have been times when I have tried to implement projects that have failed; I call it having my "western" head on, not my Khmer one.
The Met has previously returned a Khmer item, a 10th-century Shiva head that was given to Mr. Im's agency in 1997 at the urging of Martin Lerner, the Met's Southeast Asian curator at the time.
But "My Khmer Heart" also meets tough reality head-on, or as directly as a wayward character like Ms. Cox allows.
She looked around smiling and cocked her head at the announcements in Khmer.
