Liberia's Chuckie Taylor Indicted in Miami for Torture
Posted on Wed Dec 06, 2006 at 07:16:30 PM EST
Tags: torture, Libya (all tags)
A federal indictment has been handed down in Miami against former Liberian Chief Charles Taylor's son, Chuckie Taylor, also known as Charles McArthur Emmanuel.
The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor was indicted Wednesday on U.S. charges of committing torture as chief of a violent paramilitary unit during his father's regime, marking the first time a 12-year-old federal anti-torture law has ever been used, U.S. officials said.
As for the details of the charges:
Emmanuel headed the Anti-Terrorist Unit in Liberia after his father became president in 1997. The indictment says that on July 24, 2002, the unit and National Police abducted an unnamed man from his home, and Emmanuel was seen interrogating him at Taylor's presidential residence, known as Whiteflower.
Later, according to the indictment, the man was taken to another residence where Emmanuel and others allegedly burned him with a hot iron, forced him at gunpoint to hold scalding water, used electric shocks on his genitalia and other body parts and rubbed salt into this wounds.
The 1994 law allows prosecution for acts of overseas torture so long as the defendant is a U.S citizen, a legal resident of the U.S. or present in this country.
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