If only Lil Chuckie had worked for Blackwater...

Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, founder of the Demon Forces (officially referred to as the Anti-Terrorism Unit) is in the Hague. His son Chuckie McArthur Emmanuel, born in Boston, in in Miami facing prosecution under 18 USC 2340A, the extraterritorial torture statute. In Liberia in the late 90s,

Mr. Emmanuel selected and shot [three men] in the heads [sic]. He then ordered their bodies to be dragged away and displayed two of the heads at the checkpoint posts,

you know, among other counter-terrorist-spring-break activities...

Q: Is his defense attorney smart enough to make use of exemptions to US torture law to get Chuckie off?

(Chuckie's trial in the US, btw, might have been mooted by extraordinary rendition; can't we just call this guy a terrorist and ship his ass to Syria and pull out his fingernails?)

I mean, it's tricky, but this is what the guy is paid for. It all hinges on his status. Emmanuel, clearly considers himself an anti-terrorist operative. It's clear that the USG doesn't want to deport/extradict him, so there's no real loss by his claiming to be a paramilitary fighter, or a civilian contractor working for the Liberian (i.e., his pop's) army. At the time of the atrocities, the nearest thing governing the actions of American civilian contractors was MEJA (Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, 2000), which covers any American employed overseas by Department of Defense. Commit a felony, you're tried in the US. There were, until last year, holes:

The holes in MEJA became especially apparent during the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004, when a civilian interrogator from Titan Corporation and a civilian interpreter from CACI International faced no punishment, despite their implication in the official report.31 These civilians were technically working for the US Department of the Interior, rather than the DOD, thus shielding them from MEJA’s reach. Their military colleagues had no such protection from courts-martial, however.

So, to rephrase the Q: Is there light between being an American torturer abroad and being an American civilian contractor not employed by DoD?
And, Q: Since we've spent so much time cobbling ways (way, way, way, way, way, way) for non-soldier torturers to escape prosecution by a "host country," or indeed, by anyone, where's the sympathy for the Demon?
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ds