Originally published on the CGS blog on October 6, 2008.
Trial Begins in Miami for Torture Committed in Liberia
September 23, 2008 – The upcoming trial for the ex-Liberian president’s son, Charles ‘Chuckie’ Taylor, Jr., marks the first remarkable step towards prosecuting human rights offenders who commit their abuses abroad.
Chuckie Taylor is accused of ordering torture during his father’s presidency in Liberia between 1997 and 2003 as head of the nation’s Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU). Mr. Taylor is an American citizen, and was born in Massachusetts.
According to a 14-year-old federal law never before exercised, American citizens or persons on U.S. soil accused of committing torture abroad are to be prosecuted in the United States. The case is the first of its kind and should trigger the beginning of an aggressive campaign to bring human rights violators to justice, whether they commit their transgressions on U.S. soil or abroad.
According to Human Rights Watch’s senior counsel Elise Keppler , the “trial is a vital, long-awaited step by the U.S. government to ensure human rights abusers do not escape justice.”
Although Chuckie Taylor was apprehended and detained in March of 2006, he has not faced trial yet due to several amendments made in order to add more victims to the indictment.
The alleged victims have reported shocking ill-treatment and torture including but not limited to: electric shock, burning, imprisonment in holes in the ground, execution and genital mutilation.
This trial is very important for Liberian victims who in the past have seen these crimes conducted during Liberia’s wars go largely unpunished.
Although it may seem highly unusual for this trial to be taking place in Florida, thousands of miles away from where the crimes were committed, U.S. law has been steadily expanding to allow the prosecution of torturers and individuals who commit genocide.
For example, the Genocide Accountability Act , passed in December of 2007, declared that any U.S. citizen or person on U.S. soil who committed genocide anywhere would be prosecuted under U.S. federal law.
“The Department of Justice should actively apply these laws so that the United States avoids ever being a safe haven for human rights abusers,” Keppler stated recently. Without such laws the U.S. runs the risk of attracting torturers and perpetrators of genocide who wish to escape prosecution in other countries.
Another interesting note about this extraterritorial torture statute is that it applies to U.S. citizens and officials as well as non-citizens. Human Rights Watch is currently urging the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation of human rights abuses performed by American officials abroad.
If the U.S. ever wants to be taken seriously as an enforcer of international human rights law, it must begin to hold its own citizens to those standards, this trial marks a small but definitive step in that direction.
