PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Cambodian court charged former Khmer Rouge president Khieu Samphan on Monday with crimes against humanity, the latest member of Pol Pot’s inner circle to face a trial expected next year.

The French-educated guerrilla leader, who has denied knowledge of any atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge during its 1975-79 reign of terror, also stands accused of war crimes, court spokesman Reach Sambath said.

The 78-year-old was arrested by armed police after his release from a Phnom Penh hospital earlier on Monday, and whisked to the court where he faced Cambodian and foreign judges probing one of the 20th century’s darkest chapters.

“The court has formally charged Khieu Samphan with crimes against humanity and war crimes,” the court spokesman said.

Khieu Samphan, the fifth senior Khmer Rouge cadre to be arrested since the $56 million court got under way in earnest this year, was put under provisional detention for one year.

His lawyers planned to appeal the detention order.

A close adviser of Pol Pot, Khieu Samphan has previously portrayed himself as a virtual prisoner of the regime and denied knowledge of any atrocities as Pol Pot drove his dream of creating an agrarian peasant utopia.

Slideshow ( 3 images )

About 1.7 million people were executed or died of torture, disease or starvation under the ultra-Maoist revolution.

In a new book published last week, Khieu Samphan defended Pol Pot and blamed rogue regional commanders for betraying the regime by treating people badly.

“They were stupid, brutal, and looked down on the life of human beings. They were the source of all kinds of violations,” he wrote in “Considering Cambodia’s History - From the Beginning to Democratic Kampuchea”, the country’s name under Pol Pot.

Khieu Samphan was flown to the capital after suffering a fall last week at his home in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin on the Thai border.

The long-awaited tribunal started work a few months ago after nearly a decade of delays caused by wrangling over jurisdiction and cash. Full trials are expected to begin next year.

Former foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife -- both life-long friends of “Brother Number One” Pol Pot -- were arrested and charged last week with crimes against humanity.

Slideshow ( 3 images )

“Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, who had also lived in Pailin, is in the custody of the court on similar charges, as is the Beijing-backed regime’s chief jailer, Duch, who ran Phnom Penh’s “S-21” torture and interrogation centre.

While Nuon Chea has proclaimed his innocence, Duch, in interviews with Western reporters, has confessed to his role in the mass killings and is expected to be a key witness against other senior regime figures.

Duch will be the first to make a public appearance at the tribunal when he appears for a bail hearing on Tuesday.

Khieu Samphan will be co-defended by the controversial French lawyer Jacques Verges, who knew Pol Pot in Paris in the early 1950s and flew into Phnom Penh on Monday, and Say Bory, a former president of Cambodia’s lawyers’ association.

Verges, known as the “Terror Advocate” whose previous clients include international guerrilla Carlos the Jackal and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, said in 2004 that Khieu Samphan had no blood on his hands and was just a young idealist embroiled in the politics of the Cold War.

Khieu Samphan was the leading intellectual among the small group of Cambodian students in 1950s Paris who became imbued with communism and returned home to the southeast Asian nation to form the core of the guerrilla movement that became the Khmer Rouge.

Pol Pot died in 1998 in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng.