CHARLES "CHUCKY" TAYLOR : GUILTY

The trial came to an end yesterday and Charles "Chucky" Taylor was found guilty. Jury began deliberating on Wednesday, October 31, 2008. It took them a day.

Story from Miami Herald.

Read all Mumbletomyneighbor posts regarding this epic event for the full backstory (rap track too!) here.
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Charles, "Chuckie or Chucky" Taylor: Trial Continues [UPDATE]

Extracting a pound of flesh...

It is now day 27 since the trial of Charles "Chucky" Taylor commenced. The first American citizen to be tried for torture abroad on US soil has caused a bit of an uproar, worldwide. The prosecution has called many witnesses, all attesting to the brutal nature of his alleged crimes. The defense has railroaded them on occasion with effective "out of trial" methods. Many witnesses, after testifying to the cruelty of treatments in pre-trial depositions, opted for a much more lightened tone in court. One can only assume that is fear for family, still in Liberia. There are many things to report, but they are all so horrible that I cannot even bring myself to type them. Here are a few from a little over a week ago. I'll catch up to date soon.

An update from the days that do not repeat the obvious after the jump.



14.10.08
Cross examination and prosecution's redirect revealed the following:

"The defense tried to establish that there were inconsistencies in the victim’s account of his torture experience...Previously, the victim testified that he had come out of his home freely, while both letters stated that his home was broken into by the President’s bodyguards...Also in discrepancy was the issue of whether the 100 men outside his home when he was arrested were in plain clothes (like the letters stated) or in ATU uniforms and black jump suits (what victim had previously testified to). The defense also alluded to the issue that the victim was claiming asylum to obtain medical treatment for a serious medical condition and also that he claimed asylum in 2005, after the war in Liberia had ended and new President was in office."

"In redirect, the prosecution asked questions to show once again that Chuckie Taylor had used a hot iron, boiling iron, and electric devices to torture the victim."

Later that afternoon...

"From Kondembaia, the home village of Mansaray, a total of nine persons, four men (including the witness) and five women were amputated. This happened after a rebel called Junta Two read out a note from the commander, saying that of all the men the right hand had to be cut of and of all the women the left hand had to be cut of. When Mansaray and the other civilians pleaded, Junta Two said there was no god today and that he was god and was going to decide what was going to happen that day. Junta Two also said that the hands should be sent to ex-President Kabbah and that those hands would never vote again. The four men were adult civilians, one being a retired soldier, all four had their right hand amputated. The five women were all civilians, one woman with her six year old daughter and one woman who was eight months pregnant, she died later. The hand of the girl of six years was put in the open mouth of a dead man, a police officer, and the rebels said that that would be his last food. These same rebels burnt down his house and the houses of other civilians."

Life after the amputation

"After the amputation the witness and two others went into the bush to rest a little..."

Source 1
Source 2

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Charles "Chucky" Taylor: Trial Starts [UPDATE]

Well, folks, the trial of Charles "Chuckie or Chucky" Taylor(I've seen it both ways), Jr, is soon to be a very popular Google trend. Son of the bloodbath of a president/dictator of Liberia who is on trial in Miami this week for the alleged slaughter of thousands in Liberia, is the first American to be tried here for torture abroad. You can imagine all the flurry the ever conscious American public is over such a landmark event. Charles "Chucky" Taylor, Jr. has now surpassed the beloved Kirk Cameron of Growing Pains fame on Google Trends. Just barely, if you disregard Kirk's recent spike. (see below)

Chucky, blood red; Kirk Cameron: baby blue

Click thru for the gruesome update.



I kid you not, though, this is no laughing matter. I finally gained access to an attendee of the trials (via law school blogposts) which started Monday, September 29, 2008 (jury selection 9/25/08) and must warn that the testimony is gruesome. Hideous. I will refrain from my usual candidness and get down to parsing out the facts, as grim as they may be. As you know, this is a human rights issue and a torture case. Therefore, the prosecution is going to focus on the testimony of witnesses or "survivors." The defense has attempted to weed out those that are presupposed to anti-military bias in light of the reported events of Guantanamo Bay, those that donated to any human rights organization like Red Cross or Amnesty International, as well as not freeing Mr. Taylor should he not testify in his defense.

Following the jury selection, the defense had nothing to do except for wait as the prosecution called the first in a line of witnesses. The first witness of the afternoon was the government agent that was to Gbtala Base or "College of Knowledge" (see previous post for further explanation). Not much transpired. Defense made it apparent that the said training and torture camp was open to public and all witnessed rooms, devices and whatnot could have came after defendant fled the premises.

The next was "Witness Number One" and testified to this:

"The alleged victim was next untied, stripped down naked and put into a cemented hole about five feet deep. The hole was covered with steel bars. He could not stand in the hole because there were other people in there. Instead most were squatting with water up to their chests. The name of this hole was waterfall. He received no medical attention for the two weeks he was in the hole. They were sometimes given rice to eat and water to drink. Otherwise, they would drink the water inside the hole. Men were let out of the hole to defecate, but urinated in the water inside the hole. He spent time in two other holes: one with less water and another that was clean and completely dry. He stated that he spent from August 23 to October 20 in these holes, completely naked the entire time. This was the end of the testimony for the day."

Following testimony, Judge Altonaga raised issue with "a language difficulty." She said Witness Number One was only understandable 50 percent of the time and scolded both sides for not having resolved the issue of a translator sooner. Prosecution took this opportunity to inform judge that "they tried but all translators feared for their lives."

This sounds a little fishy to me, I think it was a pity tactic that blew up in their face, but we'll see.

The next day, September 30, 2008, they called "Witness Number 5," he testified to this:

"Victim #5 described how he was kept in a pit/hole naked for the majority of his stay at the Gbatala ATU camp. He then described how he was forced by Chuckie Taylor and the ATU soldiers to engage in activities such as running the rim (holding a large log while running in circle while the log was hit with metal sticks, causing pain), stone football (playing the American football game with a stone while barefoot), forced sodomy, cutting the camp grass naked, having hot burning plastic placed on his skin, drinking his own urine, eating cigarette butts, and having wild stinging ants thrown into his pit/hole."

Stone Football...damn. There was also a discussion of a torture technique called "bullfrogging" which makes waterboarding sound tame. I still do not know what it involves.

He stated his purpose for testifying is to show the world what happened to him and not for private civil gain. The defense pointed out that he has been represented by a Human Rights USA lawyer since 2007.

In the afternoon, more witnesses were produced testifying to many of the same things. The government did seek to introduce a series of newspaper articles to the jury and the judge ruled that it was ok as long as:

"...the newspaper articles text were fully blacked out and the article titles were redacted only leaving the name of the base to be seen in the title."

Or, YOU CAN'T SEE ANY SHIT THAT IS RELEVANT. I don't know folks, Chuckie may be seeing Death Row over this, but I doubt it will be an electric chair. I predict a producer's chair. Right next to Ice Cube... (hear Chucky's debut rap track here)



USAvBelfast


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Chucky Taylor: Rap Track Released

[UPDATE:LINK TO TRIAL COVERAGE]

You remember the post from a week or so ago about Chucky Taylor:American Warlord? About the son of the African Dictator that is going to be tried for torture here in the US for acts committed in Liberia? Well Gawker.com got the track. I really like the hook. It has a bridge part that sounds unfinished, or not mixed all the way, but all in all, it's not bad. Listen to it here. And see previous post here.





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Chucky Taylor: American Warlord

[UPDATE : LINK TO TRIAL COVERAGE]
Charles "Chuckie" Taylor, Jr., the American transplant to Liberia who has been accused of murdering thousands will be the first American citizen to be tried for torture abroad in a US court. This is the son of Charles Taylor Sr., one of Africa's most savage dictators, not that white guy that was a really good shoe salesman. Although, they do look alike.


Details and more after the jump.

The story starts with Charles Sr. meeting Mother in Bentley College outside of Boston and doing the nasty, which spawned something nasty, in return. Those were the 70s and protests were high. Charles soon forgot of his economics degree and began protesting with other Liberian East Coast Activists. He soon ditches his baby's momma and three whining rugrats for the beautiful country of Liberia.

Liberia is in the continent of Africa. (The red represents bloodshed)

Charles Sr. began building his domain from the remnants of their long running civil war. Playing the political everyman, he was shaman to the tribal groups and Baptist minister to the religious. While Sr. was doing this and dressing his bodyguards in pearl necklaces and painted fingernails, Charles Jr. was living the American Dream, doing drugs, listening to rap music and getting arrested.

Once Sr. had his empire built with mansions and multiple wives, he made the phone call one Christmas to the family he hadn't seen in a decade and invited them to an all expense paid trip to visit Daddy in Liberia. The mother surprisingly said yes. (You know the saying, "You can take a whore out the whorehouse but...) I guess the fishing was just too good to pass up.

Yum, yum, gimme some.

So after seeing all this glorious goodness, Chucky went back to America, commenced to doing more drugs, listening to more rap and getting arrested again. Oh yeah, he also got a girlfriend, Lynn. Chucky was looking at doing three years, so like any good mother, she packed him up and sent him to his father in Liberia as a fugitive. At the age of 17.

Let's just say, shit hit the fan real quick for ole Chucky and he learned Liberia ain't no joke. Kill or be killed and all that jazz. Seeing as raping women and killing people are as common as taking a piss, Chucky took at least 10 pisses a day.

During one of his coke fueled hallucinations Chucky came up with the idea of the Anti-Terrorist Unit. It would be the most savage group of soldiers Africa had ever seen. He set up the training facility in Gbtal which was also known Cobra Base (sounds like some G.I. Joe shit...) The interrogation facility was ingeniously titled the "College of Knowledge.) All hopefuls who attended the facility had to endure "Zero Week" where it was not uncommon to see trainers perform the classic magic trick, saw a woman in half! However, they often substituted a woman with a trainee and the saw for a machine gun. Some others "were burned alive over flaming barrels of gasoline."

At some point his high school girlfriend came to live with him (can you fucking believe it!) in a 2-story mansion by the ocean where they had a child. With his increasing cocaine problems, his idea of greatness soared and started dabbling in the blood diamond trade after befriending an Israeli arms dealer named Leonid Minin who REALLY knew how to party. In 2000 the Italian police found Minin in his hotel room with four prostitutes, 58 grams of cocaine, $25,000 in cash and $500,000 in diamonds. And two shoes.

So then all hell broke loose. Chucky's picture perfect family fell apart. His old lady left him. Father was about to be overthrown. So he ran. To Paris. And then you'll never guess what happened!

HE RECORDED A RAP ALBUM! HAHAHAHAH! [UPDATE: To hear track, see follow up post here.]

With such awesomely unique lyrics, such as: "Take this for free/Six feet under is where you gonna be."

Man, I can't believe that didn't take off for him.

Then his ass got thrown in jail by a whole slew of human rights groups. He converted to Islam and blah blah blah. Same old shit. There is a good quote that the author, Johnny Dwyer, came up with that I'll leave you with.

"The nation that Charles Taylor and his son left behind is like a drunk uncle who has finally dried out: broke, unemployed and prone to maudlin binges of self-destruction."

Well said, Johnny.


LEARNING MORE ABOUT LIBERIA

Liberia literally means, "Land of the Free." The country was conceived in 1816 in America as a place to put the freed slaves. Slavery is still active in Liberia.

Liberian Flag

Miss Liberia

Liberian National Anthem

Link to abbreviate article, you gotta by the mag if you want the whole thing. Rolling Stone


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