"He ironed his victim's flesh and rubbed salt into their wounds in Liberia's torture camps." The former Liberian president's son Charles Emmanuel, or 'Chuckie', appeared in court on Wednesday in Miami. It is the first case against a US citizen for committing torture overseas.

In a groundbreaking trial, former Liberian President Charles Taylor's son, Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Chuckie Taylor, is charged with inflicting and ordering the torture of prisoners as head of the elite paramilitary unit in his father's government.

The case marks the first prosecution under a 1994 law criminalizing torture outside US borders. It tests the principle that alleged human rights abusers should answer for their crimes no matter where they are brought to account. The 'Chuckie trial' is a test case in prosecuting torture committed elsewhere by US citizens.

The demon forces
he federal prosecutors say Mr Emmanuel cut a swathe of terror across Liberia from 1997 through at least 2002. His unit became known as the Demon Forces as it committed torture, rape and burned people alive. The prosecutors allege that Mr Emmanuel headed the camp where the Demon Forces kept prisoners in pits covered with iron bars and barbed wire. They say he personally brutalized at least seven people by pressing hot irons on their flesh, shocking them and shovelling stinging ants on one naked victim who was forced into a dirt pit.

Mr Emmanuel, born in Boston in 1977 while his father was a student there, was formally charged in 2006 with torture, conspiracy to commit torture and possession of a firearm during the crimes. He faces life imprisonment if found guilty on all counts. The former Liberian warlord's son pleaded not guilty to the charges, telling the judge:

"A lie can run halfway around the globe, your honour, before the truth can lace its shoes."

Charles Taylor's son
Charles Taylor senior is currently on trial at a special UN-backed court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, on charges of orchestrating violence in Sierra Leone's bloody civil war. His son's alleged crimes took place between 1999 and 2002 in Liberia, where prosecutors say his job was to intimidate and silence Taylor's opponents by any means necessary.

Mr Emmanuel has been in US custody since March 2006, when he returned from Liberia at Miami International Airport, carrying a new US passport he had obtained after falsifying his father's name on an application. Mr Emmanuel pleaded guilty to fraud charges and was sentenced to 11 months imprisonment, but claimed at a sentencing hearing that the torture case is a politically motivated attempt "to make me pay for being the son of Taylor."

After years of war, Liberia has not tried cases involving serious crimes and no international tribunal is mandated to prosecute past crimes in Liberia. Even Charles Taylor is merely accused of crimes in Sierra Leone. Chuckie's case is the first to deal with Liberia's brutal past.

Read more: Charles Chuckie Taylor on torture trial in Miami