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Friday, March 29 2024 @ 05:22 AM CDT

Son of Pat Robertson's Best Friend charged with committing torture

Whited Sepulchers

The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor was indicted Wednesday on U.S. charges of committing torture as chief of a violent paramilitary unit during his father's regime, marking the first time a 12-year-old federal anti-torture law has ever been used, U.S. officials said.
Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr. and Roy M. Belfast Jr., was charged in a three-count federal indictment with committing torture overseas as a U.S. citizen as well as conspiracy. He was born in Boston in 1977 to a former girlfriend of Taylor, who was a college student there at the time.

Because Emmanuel, 29, was born in the United States, prosecutors charged him under a 1994 law making it a crime for a U.S. citizen to commit torture or war crimes abroad. Emmanuel is already in custody in Miami awaiting sentencing for falsifying his father's name to get a passport he used to enter the U.S. from Trinidad in March.

Alice Fisher, assistant U.S. attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division, said the indictment was the first time charges under the torture laws had been brought. Emmanuel faces a potential life prison sentence.

"Crimes such as these will not go unanswered," Fisher said at a news conference in Washington with Miami U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta and Julie L. Myers, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"This is a clear message that the United States will not be a safe haven for human rights violators," Myers said.

Emmanuel headed the Anti-Terrorist Unit in Liberia after his father became president in 1997. The indictment says that on July 24, 2002, the unit and National Police abducted an unnamed man from his home, and Emmanuel was seen interrogating him at Taylor's presidential residence, known as Whiteflower.

Later, according to the indictment, the man was taken to another residence where Emmanuel and others allegedly burned him with a hot iron, forced him at gunpoint to hold scalding water, used electric shocks on his genitalia and other body parts and rubbed salt into this wounds.

Emmanuel's court-appointed lawyer, Miguel Caridad, declined comment on the new charges.

Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit international rights group, and Liberian witnesses have said the unit was involved in many murders, kidnappings, torture, abuse of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers and looting.

"Given Chuckie Taylor's links to serious human rights abuses in Liberia, this indictment is especially significant for victims there," said Elise Keppler, counsel for Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program. "After years of civil war, the Liberian justice system is in no shape to pursue this."

Emmanuel's father, meanwhile, 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, many hacked to death with machetes. Taylor has pleaded not guilty.

Emmanuel pleaded guilty in September to lying on his passport application by listing his father as "Steven Daniel Smith" rather than Taylor or his stepfather, Roy Belfast. Emmanuel legally changed his name to Roy Belfast Jr. in 1990 and had a long criminal record as a child in the Orlando, Florida, area under that name, according to court documents.

Sentencing was scheduled for Thursday in the passport case, with prosecutors seeking a nearly two-year prison term.

In a written statement to the judge in passport case, Emmanuel said he falsified the name to get around a United Nations travel ban imposed on both him and his father. But Emmanuel said he was the victim of a "smear campaign" regarding the alleged Liberian atrocities, mentioning the 2005 Hollywood film "Lord of War" as an example.

"I am alongside my father depicted as a gold gun toting made man who lusts for girls with cowboy hats along with diamonds and money," Emmanuel wrote. "I wish not for these allegations, perceptions, and hypothefications to exist; clearly they are above the realm of reality."

Emmanuel joined his father in Liberia in 1997, three years after fleeing prosecution in Orlando on attempted robbery, aggravated assault and other charges, court documents show. Taylor had taken office that year after leading a rebel group against former President Samuel Doe during a seven-year civil war that claimed some 250,000 lives.

Taylor fled Liberia in 2003 after his indictment by the special Sierra Leone court. He was arrested in Africa one day before his son was apprehended March 30 at Miami International Airport.

http://www.iht.com

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Televantelist's pal Charles Taylor again linked to al Qaeda money laundering, conflict diamonds

American Atheists, #1074, 31 December 2002

What is described as an aggressive year-long European probe into al Qaeda financing has confirmed what many investigative journalists have already established—terrorist groups are laundering money with the help of key African leaders involved in the mining of gold, selling off of natural resources and the lucrative trade in conflict diamonds.

The Washington Post, which over the weekend reported that it had obtained a copy of the intelligence report, said that key senior terrorist agents of Osama bin Laden oversaw a $20 million diamond-buying spree that effectively cornered the market on the region's precious stones.

The report adds that the leader of Liberia, Charles Taylor, has received at least $1 million for providing sanctuary to bin Laden agents in the weeks following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC. The men moved freely between a protected area in Liberia, and the presidential compound in neighboring Burkina Faso.

Neither the Post summary nor the intelligence report, however, mention Taylor's connections in the United States which include members of the former Clinton White House, Rainbow Coalition head Rev. Jesse Jackson, and business associate Pat Robertson who is a major religious right luminary and founder of the Christian Coalition.

In fact, Robertson has entered into a special agreement with Taylor's government to operate a mining business known as Freedom Gold Ltd. Taylor, who led an insurgent movement and emerged as President of Liberia following a bloody and divisive civil war, has reciprocated by helping Robertson's ministry organize giant prayer rallies, and ordered the closing of all churches and businesses so people would attend the events.

During a Liberia For Jesus rally, Taylor collapsed onto the ground, and declared We shall confess our sins before God, (and) ask him to heal our land.

While Taylor is putting on the masque of public religiosity and trying to turn his nation into a theocracy, however, watch dog groups say that he is looting Liberia's wealth, aiding terrorists and violating human rights on a massive scale. Even an article in the conservative US News written last year by journalist Michael Barone noted: Taylor runs a regime that, according to Amnesty International, routinely imprisons, torture, and rapes citizens for offenses like participating in peaceful demonstrations.

Conflict Diamonds Funding Terror
One source of Taylor's enormous wealth has been his ties to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of neighboring Sierra Leon. RUF controls extensive diamond mining operations which ship the stones to Liberia where they are often sold for cash at discount to al Qaeda agents. Taylor, in exchange for his financial and military support of the RUF, receives a commission on each exchange.

In a fastidiously documented expose in the July 2000 issue of New Republic, Ryan Lissa traced the ties linking Taylor and numerous al Qaeda officials beginning with Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah. His name appears in the latest European intelligence report as well. Abdullah, a top aide to Osama bin Laden, arrived in Liberia's capital of Monrovia in September, 1998 and met with one of Taylor's longtime cronies, Ibrahim Bah, who is also mention in the documents obtained by the Post. Just two weeks after the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, more al Qaeda operatives arrived in Liberia and purchased RUF diamonds through Taylor intermediaries. According to Lizza, the Liberian diamond pipeline had become a vital component for survival of al Qaeda and the RUF.

Like bin Laden, Ibrahim Bah was a product of the blowback operation conducted by the U.S.in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Money, training and military equipment—including ground-to-air Stinger rockets—were given to various Mujahadeen or holy warrior militias in order to drive out the Soviet forces which had invaded Afghanistan to prop up a rump government ensconced in Kabul. In the wake of the Russian withdrawal, civil war erupted among the various factions. Local warlords, many linked to the international drug trade, squared off against free-lance military commanders and religious militias. By 1998, a faction known as the Taliban controlled about 90% of Afghanistan, and with the help of Pakistan's Interagency Intelligence Service (ISI), installed a ruthless, ultra-Islamic regime.

With the Russians expelled and the Soviet Union collapsed, Islamic militants turned their attention to propagating a stern version of Jihad or Holy War. This has taken the form of confronting not only nominally secular governments in the Middle East (such as Egypt) or regimes like Saudi Arabia deemed inattentive to enforcing the Shar'ria (Muslim law), but wider forces such as globalism, capitalism and, of course, the United States.

Friends In High Places
Like the Taliban, Taylor's regime was born out of a cycle of civil strife and military uprisings. In April, 1980, young army officers staged a bloody coup in Liberia and killed then-President William R. Tolbert. Samuel Doe became head of state,and chairman of a ruling People's Redemption Council. He also emerged as a key played in U.S. geopolitical strategy in Africa, and a year later President Ronald Reagan ordered an increase in military and other aid to the new Liberian regime.

Corruption and charges of election fraud, though, characterized the Doe government. In December, 1989, a small insurgency led by a former procurement official in the Doe bureaucracy, Charles Taylor, crossed the border into Liberia from the Ivory Coast and soon initiated another bloody civil war. Taylor made alliance with various local chieftains and warlords, and charges were soon made that he was exploiting the wealth of conquered territories to finance his political ambitions. By August, 1996 Taylor and his National Patriotic Front managed to win the first democratic elections held in Liberia in over a decade. The civil war, Taylor declared, was an act of God to punish Liberians for their sins.

A Human Rights Watch World Report in 1999 noted, The newly elected government of Charles Taylor in Liberia showed an intolerance of losing factions in that country's civil war. Liberia was also described as a nation rich in oil or precious minerals such as diamonds, (where) wealth appeared ... to buttress dictatorial regimes characterized by a lack of respect for human rights than to promote development.

Despite such concerns, though, Taylor had friends in high places where it counted most—Washington, DC.

One was Rev. Jesse Jackson, who became the Clinton administration's Special Envoy to Africa. In late 1998, Jackson was urging area leaders to reach out to the RUF and its commander, Fody Sankoh. Lizza noted that Sankoh built his Revolutionary United Front by systematically kidnapping children and forcing them to murder their parents ... Once children were conscripted, their loyalty was maintained through drugs—they were injected with speed, which numbed their sensitivity to violence and rendered them dependent on their adult suppliers—and violence. When conscripts tried to escape, RUF leaders amputated their limbs.

Taylor had used similar tactics during the civil war, employing a Small Boys Unit within his guerilla organization.

Jackson and Taylor first met in 1998, and in November of that year the envoy urged the Sierra Leone government to reach out to these RUF in the brush battlefield. Even after the RUF launched a deadly raid on the capital of Freetown, Jackson continued his efforts on behalf of the guerillas, and pushed through the July, 1999 Lome Agreement which made Sankoh the new vice president of Sierra Leone. The former RUF head was also put in charge of the country's diamond mines.

It 1999, Pat Robertson incorporated a Cayman Islands-based firm known as Freedom Gold, Inc., and signed an agreement with the Taylor regime to mine an area in southeastern Liberia. Numerous accounts have documented the fact that Taylor enjoys a 10 percent interest in the country. But the curious ties linking al Qaeda, Taylor and Robertson -- an association based, it appears, on pure greed—soon generated controversy. The Washington Post carried two stories critical of the cozy Robertson-Taylor business agreement, to which a Freedom Gold official replied: Freedom Gold Limited was formed in response to Liberia's need to spur economic activity after their long and devastating civil war. Dr. Robertson remains a friend of Liberia and is working to alleviate the suffering of the Liberian people. Dr. Robertson's first and foremost goal is to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations.

Before he was spreading the gospel in Liberia, though, Robertson launched a business deal involving mining concessions in a remote area of the country known as Bukon Jedeh. Since 1978, a former California legislator , Ken Ross Jr. had been trying to develop a gold mining operation there along with a former campaign worker for California Gov. Jerry Brown, William Burke. Ten years later, a local gold rush of sorts began , but the stampede for riches was interrupted by the 1990 civil war.

Once Taylor had secured power, Ross was approached by the new Liberian leader saying that he wanted to talk to Pat Robertson. He likely knew about Robertson's earlier forays in the Congo when the televangelist started his African Development Corporation, and become the foremost supporter of Zairian strong man Mobutu Sese Seko. Like Taylor, Mobutu had a miserable record of human rights abuses, and even missionary groups in Zaire were dismayed by the close association between Robertson and the dictator. In 1989, for instance, Mobutus government cracked down on unrecognized religious groups. Evelyn Millman of the American Baptists Churches complained than Robertson's first visit to Zaire was an endorsement and another instance of the U.S. supporting a terrible dictator.

Robertson and his wife were flown to Zaire on Mobutu's official jet, entertained on his personal yacht, and spent time at Mobutu's lavish presidential retreat. Out of this soiree, Robertson gained extensive land and mining concessions for his African Development Corporation. One observer who participated in meetings at CBN's studio headquarters described reports of a potential $1 billion cash payout.

At one meeting was a Liberian-born lawyer named Gerald Padmore. He ushered the December, 1998 incorporation of Freedom Gold Ltd., a company owned totally by the Pat Robertson Charitable Remainder Trust. An article in Fortune Magazine traces Padmore and a former mining engineer, Joe Mathews, to a May, 1999 meeting with Charles Taylor at the presidential mansion in Monrovia. Journalist Daniel Roth wrote: In Taylor's temporary office, a room covered with heavy curtains concealing bare concrete walls, the three worked out mining agreements. While there was back and forth over wording and tax issues, there was one agreement that Freedom Gold couldn't get out of. Like any other mining operation in Liberia, Freedom Gold would be required to give the government the right to exercise—at no cost -- options worth 10% of the company. Robertson's and Taylor's fortunes would now be linked.

Today, Charles Taylor is also spreading his gospel. The Religious Freedom Report on Liberia issued last year by the U.S. Department of States that while Liberia's constitution provides for freedom of religion and does not endorse on paper a particular faith, government ceremonies invariably open and close with prayer and may include the singing of hymns. The prayers and hymns usually are Christian but occasionally are Muslim.

The Robertson-backed prayer rally, Liberia For Jesus was organized by Bishop John Gimenez of the Rock Church in Virginia Beach, VA. Gimenez had staged a similar event in 1996 which brought nearly 75,000 evangelicals to the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building for Washington For Jesus. As part of the $1.5 million spectacle, Gimenez hosted a leadership conference in Constitution Hall along with Oral Roberts University president Richard Roberts, Jerry Falwell of Liberty University, and Pastor John Arnott of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship.

At the Washington For Jesus rally, controversial faith-healer Benny Hinn performed his theatrics. Gimenez told the crowd that the United States was guilty of allowing seven giant sins—religious persecution, homosexuality, racism, abortion, drug use, occultism and AIDS—to spread. He urged followers to convict and execute these giant evils at large in our country. During a mock trial, various Christian officials played the role of prosecuting attorneys, and the crowd enthusiastically convicted America guilty of sin.

Liberia For Jesus was a joint operation between Gimenez and Robertson's CBN ministry, all made possible with the help of Charles Taylor.

I believe that this rally is the atomic bomb of peace, gushed an excited Pastor Gimenez.

The country's businesses and churches were ordered closed by Taylor for what a CBN press release described as three days of prayer, praise and repentance. The prayer rally attracted 75,000 worshippers who packed the Samuel Doe Stadium in Monrovia. Taylor was at his theatrical best, avoiding any talk about guerilla raids, amputation or self-dealing with al Qaeda.

I can see the angels moving through this stadium! Taylor shouted into the microphone. And they went back to God and said, 'Lord, Liberia is knocking on the door.' And I can hear Him say, 'Open the door and let Liberia in! (CBN story by Victor Oladokun, March 8, 2002). Taylor then laid prostrate on the ground, slain in the spirit.

I tell you: over me is one greater than I, added Taylor. This authority is Jesus Christ. Not I am your President, but Jesus.

It was spectacular theater, a command performance by Taylor whose profuse public religiosity impressed fellow crusaders and worshippers. I have never before seen a President dedicate his nation to God and lie on the ground in front of such a crowd, declared one evangelist from the United States.

Liberia's Vice President, Moses Zelba, said that the Liberia for Jesus rally was the largest event I have seen in my life.

Other leading government officials openly acknowledge that Jesus is the only answer for the trouble that has engulfed Liberia, reported CBN. Robertson's network praised Taylor's antics on stage as a symbol of the nation's corporate surrender to the sovereignty of Jesus.

When the President asked us to pray, I cried like I had never before, wept Pastor Gregory Simmons of South Carolina who attended the Liberia For Jesus event. I really believe God is going to do something awesome in this country.

Just days before the lavish religious spectacle, though, something else of an awesome nature was going on. Ibrahim Bah, Taylor's close friend and associate, was meeting with al Qaeda operatives Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who traveled frequently between Liberia and the RUF diamond mines. Other operatives such as Lebanese diamond dealer Allie Darwish were also active in the scheme. As for Ibrahim Bah, he is Senegalese, and according to intelligence reports trained in Libya and fought during the 1980s with the Islamic Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, and later participated in Hezbollah operations in Lebanon. He then moved on to Liberia becoming the main weapons buyer and diamond dealer for Taylor and the RUF.

Others have reportedly found a safe haven in Liberia for their activities. Along with the influx of Protestant American evangelicals who seem to provide favorable camouflage for Charles Taylor, there have been drug lords from South American, Ukrainian and Russian mobsters, even rogue mercenaries from South Africa. As the New Republic piece noted, it was no surprise when Islamic fanatics in search of weapons and diamonds showed up. None of this has stopped either Rev. Jackson or Rev. Robertson from defending the rogue regime It is indeed a strange nexus linking those who say that they serve God, but are also able to do business with Mammon.

For further information
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/roberts5.htm (Robertson in gold mining deal with Liberian strong man; part of 'Christian ministry exploitation? 6/4/99)

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/robert11.htm (Robertson rush plan for California power plant rejected... 7/1/01)

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/robert10.htm (Robertson again calls for Christian 'revolt' over Supreme Court prayer, abortion rulings, 6/22/00)

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Pat Robertson partner Charles Taylor funded Al-Qaeda, report says
Church & State, Feb 2003

Liberian President Charles Taylor, a business partner of TV preacher Pat Robertson, helped fund al-Qaeda terrorists by giving them safe harbor in his country during a diamond-buying spree, investigators in Europe have charged.

Investigators looking into a connection between al-Qaeda and Taylor determined that terrorists were active in the region for at least two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. Investigators charged that three highly placed al-Qaeda operatives, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, moved about in Liberia and nearby Burkina Faso, buying diamonds that were later used to fund terrorist activities. The trio was later joined by other a-Qaeda terrorists, who moved in and out of Liberia at will.

The Washington Post reported that the investigators believe that Taylor, Liberia's dictator, received a $1 million payoff for harboring the terrorists. Al-- Qaeda operatives apparently began smuggling diamonds in the region after the U.S. government froze the group's American assets in September of 1998, following the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Key al-Qaeda terrorists stepped up their activity in Liberia just before the Sept. 11 attacks. In July of 2001, an al-- Qaeda leader flew to Burkina Faso with $1 million that was eventually turned over to Taylor. According to the report from European investigators, the money was to pay Taylor "to hide the two al-- Qaeda operatives in Camp Gbatala," a military facility near a farm Taylor owns.

Robertson has been in business with Taylor since 1999, when he formed a company called Freedom Gold Limited. The company, although chartered in the Cayman Islands, operates out of Robertson's Virginia Beach headquarters. Robertson's agreement with Taylor gives Freedom Gold the right to mine for gold in southeastern Liberia. If any gold is found, Taylor's government will pocket royalty fees.

Taylor, considered one of the most brutal dictators in the world, is an international pariah who has been accused of looting the impoverished west African nation for personal gain. Last year, he appeared at a "Liberia for Jesus" rally in the nation's capital of Monrovia, where he proclaimed that the country was under the rule of Jesus Christ. The event, which Robertson helped organize, received coverage on the televangelist's Christian Broadcasting Network.

Robertson has also tried, without success, to convince the U.S. government to ally with Taylor. He lobbied the State Department to lift its ban on Taylor and allow him to visit the United States and in June of 2002 went so far as to write to Secretary of State Colin Powell, demanding to know why the United States has not backed Taylor in his struggle against an armed opposition movement called Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy.

At the time Robertson wrote the letter, U.S. intelligence officials were already looking into a connection between Taylor and al-Qaeda. Although Taylor has denied being tied to al-Qaeda, investigators say the connection is well established. Observers speculate that the new information may lead to further U.S. sanctions against the country.

Copyright Americans United for Separation of Church and State Feb 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

http://www.findarticles.com


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