Taylor's son sentenced on passport fraud

The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor was sentenced Thursday to 11 months in prison for passport fraud, a day after being indicted on separate torture charges.

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, who headed a violent paramilitary unit in his father's government, was scheduled to make another court appearance later Thursday on the charges of torture and conspiracy involving alleged acts committed in Liberia in 2002.

Emmanuel, 29, also known as Charles "Chuckie" Taylor and Roy Belfast Jr., told the federal judge he gave a false name for his father on his passport application earlier this year because he would have been barred from entering the United States if he had used Taylor's name.

He was arrested March 30 at Miami International Airport on passport fraud charges and has spent more than eight months in custody. His lawyer, Miguel Caridad, said it appeared the passport case was simply used to keep Emmanuel behind bars while the torture indictment was prepared.

Emmanuel, a U.S. citizen born in Boston to his father's former girlfriend, on Wednesday became the first person charged under a 1994 law making it a crime for a U.S. citizen to commit torture or war crimes abroad.

His father faces trial next spring in The Hague, Netherlands, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly overseeing the murder, rape and mutilation of thousands of people during Sierra Leone's bloody 10-year civil war. Taylor was apprehended in March in Africa and has pleaded not guilty.

In a statement to the judge, Emmanuel suggested that U.S. prosecutors were trying "to make me pay for being the son of a former African leader."

Emmanuel faces nearly 50 years in prison if convicted on the new three-count indictment accusing him and others of abducting a man in 2002 in Monrovia, Liberia. They are charged with torturing him with methods including a hot iron and electric shocks.

Emmanuel joined his father in 1997, shortly after Taylor became Liberia's president following a bloody seven-year civil war.

Liberian Justice Minister Frances Johnson-Morris, whose nation has not charged Taylor or any family members, said her government "welcomes the due process of law" in Emmanuel's case. Liberia has created a Truth and Reconciliation commission to investigate alleged atrocities such as massacres and rapes.

"He's a U.S. citizen and we have nothing to do with what his country decides to do to him," she said.