Oh, the irony! U.S. charges son of former Liberian leader with torture

Son of ex-Liberian leader faces charges

By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 22 minutes ago

The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor was indicted Wednesday on U.S. charges of committing torture as chief of a paramilitary unit during his father's regime.

The indictment marks the first time a 12-year-old federal anti-torture law has ever been used, U.S. officials said. [And the second time the law is used will be for Rumsfeld, right? Right?]

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Chuckie Taylor Jr., was charged with committing torture overseas as a U.S. citizen as well as conspiracy.

Emmanuel, 29, was born in Boston in 1977 to a former girlfriend of Taylor, who was a college student there at the time.

The younger Emmanuel is already in custody in Miami, awaiting sentencing for falsifying his father's name to get a passport he used to enter the United States in March.

Emmanuel headed the Anti-Terrorist Unit in Liberia after his father became president in 1997. Human Rights Watch, an international rights group, and Liberian witnesses have said the unit was involved in many other murders, torture, abuse of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers and looting.

The indictment said that in 2002, a man was abducted from his home, and Emmanuel and others burned him with a hot iron, forced him at gunpoint to hold scalding water, applied electric shocks to his genitals and other body parts and rubbed salt in this wounds.

Emmanuel's court-appointed lawyer, Miguel Caridad, declined comment.

Emmanuel's father faces trial next spring in The Hague, Netherlands, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly overseeing the murder, rape and mutilation of thousands of people during Sierra Leone's bloody 10-year civil war.