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Ex-Liberian President's Son To Go On Trial Next Week

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The Associated Press

Published: September 20, 2008

MIAMI - Federal prosecutors say former Liberian President Charles Taylor's son poured molten plastic on the skin of the regime's opponents, rubbed salt in their wounds and shocked them with electricity during a horrific three-year campaign of intimidation in Africa.

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr., is set to go on trial here next week as prosecutors test, for the first time, a 1994 law making it a crime for U.S. citizens to commit torture overseas.

Prosecutors say Emmanuel brutalized at least seven people by pressing hot irons on their flesh, shocking them, and even shoveling stinging ants on one naked victim who was forced into a dirt pit.

Emmanuel, 31, has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which carry a combined possible sentence of life in prison. His attorney contends the people who say they were victims are lying to get political asylum.

Emmanuel, born in 1977 in Boston while his father was a college student there, is also charged with conspiracy for the shootings of three people at a bridge checkpoint in Liberia in 1999. At the time Emmanuel was commander of the elite paramilitary Anti-terrorist Unit in his father's government - a unit called the "Demon Forces" by many Liberians.

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