In a strange twist of fate, former Liberian President Charles Taylor and his American son are facing charges in separate courts, on different continents, for committing atrocities in the neighboring West African nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia.
According to the Associated Press, one will have his day in court in front of a U.N.-backed war crimes assembly in The Hague, the International Criminal Court, and the other by a U.S. federal court in Miami. Each will unveil the barbarity of the conflicts the pair inflicted upon the residents of the two countries.
A witness in Miami shows the scars he says came from burning plastic poured onto his skin in Liberia. Disturbingly, a mother in The Hague recalls how rebels in Sierra Leone ordered her to carry a sack containing the heads of her two children who had just been slashed to death.
A former prisoner testified this Tuesday, saying: “I want the world to know what happened to me so it will not happen again in the future.”
Both father and son have pleaded not guilty.