Chuckie Taylor (r) with Benjamin Yeates (l)
photo courtesy of Johnny Dwyer and Lynn Henderson)
During the reign of Liberian President Charles Taylor (1997 – 2003), torture and other crimes against humanity became the norm. Many of these atrocities were carried out by the Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU), which was an elite, personalized military force led by Taylor’s son, Charles “Chuckie” Taylor Jr. aka Roy Belfast (his legal name). A U.S. citizen, Chuckie used his citizenship status and patronage to abuse his role as commander of the ATU. Acting with complete impunity, the ATU quickly gained a reputation for its brutality and use of a variety of torture methods that Chuckie Taylor either supervised or carried out himself.
In 2006, Chuckie Taylor was arrested in Florida for attempting to enter the United States under a falsified passport. He pleaded guilty to passport fraud and was sentenced to 11 months in prison on that charge on Dec. 7, 2007.
CJA began investigating Taylor in 2006 in pursuit of filing a civil suit, and represented an individual who was personally tortured by Chuckie Taylor. CJA advocated for the U.S. federal government to investigate Taylor’s crimes in Liberia. In December 2006, criminal charges were filed against him for torture and conspiracy to commit torture under U.S. extraterritorial torture statute, 18 U.S.C. §2340A. The extraterritorial torture statute allows the federal government to prosecute anyone who committed, or attempted or conspired to commit, torture abroad, as long as the perpetrator is present in the U.S.
On October 30, 2008, a jury convicted Chuckie Taylor of torture and conspiracy to commit torture. On January 9, 2009, Chuckie Taylor was sentenced to 97 years in prison; a term he is currently serving in Florida.
He was the first person ever to be prosecuted and convicted under the U.S. extraterritorial torture statute. The only other individuals to be charged under this statute are Sulejman Mujagic, who was extradited to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2013 to stand trial there for murder and torture allegedly committed in the Bosnian War, Ross Roggio, who was convicted in 2023 for torture as part of an alleged unlawful firearms manufacturing scheme in Iraq, and Michael Sang Correa, who was charged in 2020 for torture allegedly committed in The Gambia.
