Charges include ordering and inflicting of torture

Hot irons held to human flesh. Electric shocks to a man's genitalia. Fire ants poured onto a naked prisoner in a pit.

Those are some of the brutal acts jurors will hear about when the groundbreaking trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor's son begins this week in a federal courtroom in Miami, Florida.

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, 31, also known as Chuckie Taylor, is charged with inflicting and ordering the torture of prisoners as head of his West African nation's feared Demon Forces.

The case marks the first prosecution under a 1994 law criminalizing torture outside U.S. borders. It tests the principle that alleged human rights abusers should answer for their crimes no matter where they are brought to account.


Comment: Do ya get that? Torture is only criminal if another country is doing it!



Jury selection is expected to start this week.

Emmanuel, who has pleaded not guilty, faces a possible life sentence if convicted. Defense attorneys plan to argue that the government's witnesses are lying to obtain legal immigration status in the United States and Europe.

Emmanuel, a U.S. citizen, was born in Boston and spent his teen years with his mother and stepfather in Orlando. He later joined his father in Africa and became head of Liberia's elite security force, known formally as the Anti-Terrorism Unit and nicknamed the Demon Forces.

His father is currently on trial before a United Nations-backed tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for alleged human rights violations during Sierra Leone's civil war. U.S. agents arrested Emmanuel in March 2006, as he tried to sneak back into the country at Miami International Airport.

According to a federal indictment, Emmanuel's job from 1999 to 2002 was to intimidate, weaken and eliminate his father's political opponents.

Prosecutors will tell jurors that Emmanuel ran a prison camp in Gbatala, Liberia, where the Demon Forces kept prisoners in pits covered with iron bars and barbed wire. Guards jabbed at the prisoners through the bars with sharp metal rods and on at least one occasion shoveled stinging ants into a pit, prosecutors allege.

In April 1999, Emmanuel summarily executed three men and ordered guards to cut another prisoner's throat, the indictment states.

Human rights groups praise the prosecution as an important step toward holding an alleged torturer accountable.


Comment: What about known torturers that are right there in the U.S.?



However, the case has also stirred debate over controversial interrogation practices approved by U.S. officials in the war on terror, said Theresa Harris, a lawyer with the World Organization for Human Rights USA, based in Washington, D.C.

"It's important that the United States is bringing forward this prosecution, but it also raises an obvious question," Harris said. "Are we only going to consider it a criminal act if another country's officials conduct torture, or are we going to hold our own officials accountable?"

Prosecutors and defense lawyers are already sparring over how to define torture for the jury.

Prosecutors argue an act could be considered torture if it causes pain that is "extreme in intensity and difficult to endure." Meanwhile, Emmanuel's attorneys say the law requires a higher level of pain - that ordinarily is associated with death, organ failure or serious impairment of body functions.

Vanessa Blum can be reached at vbblum@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4605.