Arrest talk on ex-Khmer Rouge PM

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (CNN) -- Former Khmer Rouge Prime Minister Khieu Samphan arrived in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, Wednesday morning and was quickly taken to a local hospital for medical treatment.

Following the recent arrests of other former regime members, there was speculation Samphan might also be charged by the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia, a U.N.-backed genocide tribunal.

Ieng Sary, the foreign minister of the blood-soaked regime that ruled Cambodia in the late 1970s, and his wife were arrested by the tribunal on Monday and were scheduled to be in court Wednesday.

ECCC spokesman Peter Foster told CNN he could not comment on the possibility of Samphan being arrested, but did say the former leader was brought to Phnom Penh by the Cambodian government.

The special tribunal of Cambodian and international judges was established to prosecute ex-Khmer Rouge officials for the killings that accompanied the communist movement's 1975-1979 rule. As many as 2 million people were killed in the party's efforts to transform Cambodia into an agrarian utopia before troops from neighboring Vietnam overthrew the regime.

Remnants of the Khmer Rouge continued to battle Cambodia's government into the 1990s before fragmenting in the middle of the decade. Ieng defected from the movement in 1996, taking about 10,000 guerrillas with him, and Pol Pot died of natural causes in 1998.

The top surviving Khmer Rouge leader, Nuon Chea, was arrested in September and faces trial before the special tribunal on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Another Khmer Rouge veteran, Kaing Guek Eav, is charged with carrying out mass executions and torture as the commandant of a notorious prison in Phnom Penh. E-mail to a friend