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US: Taylor's son up for torture
07/12/2006 10:19 - (SA)
Miami - United States justice authorities charged Charles "Chuckie" Taylor, 29, an American citizen and the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, with torture on Wednesday for acts carried out in the African country.
Assistant attorney general Alice Fischer said: "This marks the first time the justice department has charged a defendant with the crime of torture."
Taylor, who was in custody in the US in connection with a charge of having a false passport, to which he pleaded guilty in September, was head of Liberia's anti-terrorism forces under his father's regime 1997-2003.
He was being prosecuted under a federal law that gave US courts jurisdiction to hear cases involving acts of torture committed outside the US if the offender was an American national or was present in the US.
Acts of torture
The maximum penalty for torture was life imprisonment.
The justice department said that on Wednesday Taylor was charged with one count of torture, one count of conspiracy to torture and one count of using a firearm during the commission of a violent crime.
Specifically, he was charged with participating in the torture of a person in July 2002 who had been abducted from his home and taken to the residence of a member of the Liberian special security service.
US attorney Acosta said: "The allegations in this case include acts of torture, such as burning flesh with a hot iron, burning flesh with scalding water, and applying electric shocks."
Assistant secretary for immigration and customs enforcement Julie Myers said: "This is a clear message that the US will not be a safe haven for human rights violators."
Warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor was forced to step down from power in August 2003 in a bid to end 14 years of successive civil wars, and a transitional government was put in place to run the resource-rich, but impoverished west African country.
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