The father was one of Africa’s most brutal warlords who started his country’s civil war. He also funded the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), Sierra Leone’s former rebels. He sold the rebels’ diamonds and bought weapons for them. According to a UN estimate, the UK alone bought up to $125 million worth of diamonds a year from the RUF. The man was the king of the so-called blood diamonds that brought death and misery to thousands of people. He is Charles Taylor, Liberia’s ex-president who ruled with an iron hand for six years before being exiled in Nigeria.

He played a key role in the brutal civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. He is said to have funded Sierra Leone’s former rebels through blood diamonds. The RUF were said to be notoriously known for hacking off the arms and legs of the civilian population with machetes. They also killed, raped, and robbed people. Charles Taylor purportedly ordered militias to eat the flesh of their enemies. He has been on trial at The Hague for 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Chuckie, Charles Taylor’s son, 31, headed the infamous paramilitary unit called “Demon Forces” in his father’s government. He was born in the US but moved to Liberia when his father won the 1997 elections. He was promptly appointed to head the notorious Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU). He was only in his early 20s then. A former West African captive testified that Chuckie used to watch and laugh as prisoners were sodomized, forced to play torture games, and burned with molten plastic.

Charles McArthur Emmanuel Taylor was tried in the USA in what was the first test of a 1994 law that makes it a crime for a U.S. citizen to commit torture overseas. Originally recommended by the prosecution to be sentenced to 147 years in prison, Chuckie was finally sentenced to 97 years for torture.

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Via BBC