MIAMI (AFP) — The son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor was to be sentenced Friday on torture charges, under a law allowing US prosecution for human rights abuses committed abroad.
Charles McArthur Emmanuel Taylor, 31, a US citizen also known as "Chuckie" Taylor, was found guilty in October on charges related to summary executions and torture in the west African nation while he was the head of Liberia's anti-terrorist services during his father's 1997-2003 rule.
Taylor, who faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, was convicted of five counts of torture, one count of conspiracy to torture, one count of using a firearm during the commission of a violent crime and one count of conspiracy to use a firearm during the commission of a violent crime.
His trial was the first under a 1994 US law allowing prosecution of American nationals charged with torture outside the United States.
A US citizen born in Boston, Massachusetts, Taylor was taken into custody on March 30, 2006, while trying to enter the United States from Trinidad.
He was initially charged with passport fraud and pleaded guilty. On the day before his sentencing in December 2006, he was indicted on torture charges.
That indictment included graphic detail of brutal killings and tortures Emmanuel allegedly ordered and in some cases carried out between April 1999 and July 2003. One victim was allegedly placed naked in a pit as stinging fire ants were shoveled over his body.
He was also alleged to have tormented his victims with melted plastic, electric shocks, scalding water and beatings with "sharp metal rods."
His father, the notorious dictator Charles Taylor, is on trial for war crimes by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, Netherlands.
The elder Taylor is the first ex-African head of state to appear before an international tribunal, where he faces 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The former president, whose trial began last year, is accused of controlling rebel forces in neighboring Sierra Leone who went on a blood diamond-fueled rampage of killing, mutilation and rape during the 1991-2001 civil war.
That conflict ravaged the country for 14 years and killed as many as a quarter of a million people.
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