Japan has donated $4.17 million to the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal trying former Khmer Rouge leaders on war crimes charges, just as the troubled court was running out of funding, a court official said Friday.

Incarceration at the Khmer Rouge’s most notorious prison was tantamount to a death sentence since not even the movement’s supreme leader had the right to release prisoners, the center’s chief told a special tribunal Thursday.

The chief jailer of the Khmer Rouge, on trial for the killing of thousands of “state enemies” in the 1970s, said Wednesday that he trained peasant children as young as 12 to guard prisoners who were routinely electrocuted and whipped.

The late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot was lying when he said he was unaware that his 1970s communist regime operated a torture center, the man accused of running it testified Wednesday.

The former Khmer Rouge prison commander accused of overseeing the torture and execution of thousands of men, women and children said Tuesday that his underlings were taught class hatred that allowed them to kill their enemies.

An accused torturer for the Khmer Rouge should be detained separately from his former comrades after he apologized in court for atrocities committed by the communist regime he served three decades ago, his lawyer said Wednesday.

A Cambodian judge said Monday that the U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal established to try leaders of the Khmer Rouge is facing an imminent funding crisis, and its Cambodian personnel might have to stop working.

Attorneys have asked the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal for permission to interview Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and former King Norodom Sihanouk, according to confidential documents obtained Monday.

Prominent activists from military-ruled Myanmar and Cambodia were barred Saturday from a meeting with Southeast Asian leaders, upstaging the opening of a summit billed as a historic step toward greater human rights in the region.

A dog trained to sniff for tiger droppings will help conservationists determine if the big cats still roam one of Cambodia’s largest nature reserves.