The Phnom Penh Post

Israeli attorney Nick Kaufman has raised few eyebrows in his homeland since accepting an appointment in August to serve as a consultant for the Duch defense team, the AP reports:

"Emotionally, it's hard for me to accept that an Israeli Jew would defend a mass murderer," said Noah Flug, a survivor of the Auschwitz camp and head of an umbrella group of Holocaust survivor organizations in Israel....

Kaufman still fights for victims: He is representing eight people who fled from Darfur to Israel in an International Criminal Court case against Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir.

But he also represents such defendants as Rwandan rebel leader Callixte Mbarushimana, who was arrested this month on 11 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

"What are you doing with all these friends?" Motti Kirshenbaum, a veteran Israeli interviewer, asked Kaufman on TV.

The British-born Kaufman says, however, that even the worst war criminals deserve a proper defense - "They are not my friends, they are my clients," he told Kirshenbaum.

Duch has appealed the 30-year sentence he received in July for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions; his case is set to go before the tribunal's Supreme Court Chamber early next year.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Nick Kaufman, a former prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, has been appointed as a consultant for Duch's defence team following last month's verdict. Kaufman says he's been impressed by Duch's expressions of remorse and is ready to move forward with the appeal process.

"I believe in the sincerity of his regret, after meeting him last week, and I feel that the legal errors in the sentence reassure me that representing him in the appeal is the right thing to do," Kaufman said.

Kaufman said there was substance to the defense's claim that Duch had been just a cog in the Khmer Rouge's killing machine, following the orders of his superiors.