Chucky taylor so it is difficult wanted to part because of the atrocities he committed in the library when it was essentially a lawless war zone but because it seems to bizarre that a teenager from suburban florida could wind up there. Johnny dwyer spent five years researching it is in close contact with chucky, ism and the american officials who were ultimate brought about his conviction. He demonstrates his skill as a reporter when he put chuckys store in the context many readers would find invaluable. The nations of library and the u. S. A. Have a long and complicated relationship with one another that stretches back to the 1820s. In discussing the brood arise and fall of charles and Chucky Taylor who are now leveraging and british and american presence respectively, we should remember the west was never a passive observer to this history. It was instead involved throughout and to i think thats one of the many reasons why this history needs to be told and told today. Ladies and gentlemen, johnny dwyer. [applause] thanks. Thank you for having me. So yes, i want to talk all the bit about american warlord. In september of 2008 a federal trial opened in miami. The accused was an american man from orlando, florida. The victims and witnesses were from liberia and sierra leone. The charges laid out in this case were historic. They involve crimes of torture conspiracy to commit torture and related crimes. This case played out over the course of a month and they should really the scope of the american Justice System but also of International Law and how to confront crimes of impunity. It was also a very personal story underlying this case a story of a father and son who were separated by the nations they came from, one from the united states, one from liberia but were bound by a shared history of these two nations, a nation that was founded on behalf of free displays in west africa. I actually came to this story in the housing projects in Staten Island called park job is also known as kill the hill. Its whether we can claim came from. Is in the towards a but its also the home to one of the largest liberian communities in the united states. And a stopping off point for the refugees that fled taylors wars in both liberia and sierra leone. I was a young reporter and i was anything a lot of people regarding their experiences. Many had similar experiences of spending time in refugee camps but one name that always came up with Charles Taylor. He seemed to be the man who was responsible for their personal trajectories and for the personal circumstance. Another name that also came up was chucky. The details surrounding this individual chucky, i really scanned. At the time i just filed it away in my notebook. This was around 2002. Flash forward four years later individual named charles emmanuelle or roy belfast was identity went by, flew into miami, florida, and was quickly sort of revealed that this was Chucky Taylor. Not only was he Charles Taylor son that he was an american citizen. At that moment i sort of saw what this star was in terms of its potential. It had this broad want to save shakespearian arc to it but what i found is the reality is much more banal and much more brutal it but i did what any reporter would do in that moment. I wrote with chucky a letter and asked him for an interview. This is sort of a hail mary in terms of reporting. Chucky responded, and that became the basis for correspondence that lasted up until last november. It also became the basis for my magazine reporting that brought me to liberia for the first time. Liberia was recovering from a 14 year civil war. The civil war also bled into the sierra leone. Entire region was traumatized by taylors presence. When i arrived i didnt know it but the u. S. Investigators on the ground trying to piece together what exactly chucky had done in liberia, and that was very much my mission. It wasnt clear the scope of his crimes. It wasnt clear the sort of thoracic of the charges. So i set out to try and understand was this guy guilty, was he as bad as everyone said . Human rights watch, Amnesty International detailed his crimes but they didnt really need the level of evidence that i needed to write a piece. So want to read a short excerpt about reporting in liberia. Its a bit of false advertising because its its the only first person did in this book but i think it provides a lens into this divided into some of the challenges any investigator faces confronting these sorts of crimes. In june 2000 7a few months before rufus led the investigators i drove into to truck convoy for the first of several visits to Chucky Taylors Training Base in liberia. My guys were sober human rights workers who id met only hours earlier. These men have lived through the successive stages of the war and carved out in each in the type of information accountable to International HumanRights Groups reporters, and as it would turn out Law Enforcement officers. When i arrived at the office, a single story structure tucked behind the local archdiocese, the men sat me down for an unsolicited debrief on chucky. As the group of former combatants went through Vocational Training outside the window, the men offered up a string of fascinating is completely unverifiable tales of chuckys excesses and abuses. I was eager to get the date going but have been bored off of going to the base alone because thats one of the exploit from people who lived there were psychologically held hostage and it wasnt clear how they would react to a foreigner. My driver for the day was mr. King, a rotund man in his 60s with a twopiece smile morning a jumpsuit. The truck reach of rotten fruit and despite the we drove with open what is towards. May venture to smalltalk, charleston was about to be tried as a special court at the hague mr. King simply said i dont like to hear about Charles Taylor. To be frank with you when i hear it it vex miners. He had a destination and a tidy may not really care to know. We continued in silence. Eventually pulled off in a muddy road and drove up and inclined to a stand of trees. Stopping outside a couple of small mud brick huts. We got out of our vehicles and walk past a Community Kitchen and a framed shelter with a dirt floor coated in ash. One building we passed had the second and strong pitching of a fight id seen that day. Hibiscus singapore out of every bush. A skinny dingo skittered as big as i approached the center of the village they smoke clutch of women and torn tshirts and tattered skirts and circled chairs underneath a large in a country that has instructed me to sit down a child ran off into the bush. Moments later a bullet with dust appeared. A small crowd gathered. The woman told me her name was andy perry. What was meant to be an interview quickly turned into something of a public performance. She knew chucky she told me he would bring supplies to the women as they prepared meals in the kitchen at the base. She had not been forced to work. In fact, she was paid for her labor she said, noting things had been leaning since taylor they left power. She and other members of the crowd surged my face for reaction. I had arrived with the wrong set of assumptions. I had assumed the people that are i met with easily pick up the historical thread that was popular in the west. But the collapse of the taylor government should be followed by the pursuit of justice for the people who have been victimized by him and his son. But this idea turned out to have nothing to do with the interest of the desperately poor people in the village. Sitting with andy perry and her neighbors i nonetheless felt obligated to ask about torture at the base. Unsolicited, one of the human rights workers translate my core into something of a state in liberia in english. The question is, chucky is in the states now in jail. They accusing him for committing torture. Suffering human beings. Suffering people. Grabbing people. Sometimes they carried in there. They suffered there. I could feel the crowd link into your response no, it never happened presently me being there. She said smiling. To rapidly into i asked for her age. She was 39 and think of it as i walked away she said to one of the human rights workers i did that for nothing . Perry and another woman followed me, im into mr. King struck as mr. King struck as we drove up the hillside to the base. When we arrived they remain in the truck, i realize, as mr. King had turned on the air conditioning. One of the human rights workers pulled me aside and offered that would be little motivation and women might be more willing to be. I tried to explain to him what i could do that but felt like ive explained the rules of hockey to someone whod never been on ice. So that was my experience as a young reporter in postconflict environment with a set of distinctly american assumptions about what should happen next. Docility been accused of crime. He should be brought to trial the people of gbatala didnt have those expectations. They didnt really even understand that Justice System could go back address crimes and bring people to justice. When mr. King and i drove away he said to me when i was in the truck with those women they said yeah, they saw it all. They saw people brought into the base. They saw them thrown into holes. They saw them carried out, and this became the substance of the indictment that was brought to trial in miami in 2008. Chucky was convicted on all counts. The moment the jury rose to leave the courtroom is customary that everyone rises, including the defendant. Chucky didnt do that. I think thats very reflective of his personality. Is an egocentric individual and it doesnt feel accountable to anyone, even a jury of his peers in florida. Several months later he was sentenced to 97 years in prison. His father was facing a parallel trial in the special court for sierra leone at the hague. He was also convicted and he was sentenced to 50 years. So the story of father and son is very much a parallel narrative of crime and punishment, and thats what i tried to write as i completed american warlord. I also wanted to sort of established what the real connection was between these two nations, liberia and the united states. The founding of liberia can be traced to here in d. C. At the davis until. I dont know if it exists anymore but it was the idea of a group called the acs to repatriate africanamericans freed slaves and freed africanamericans to west africa. And that gave birth to liberia and also give birth to the consequences of the liberian civil war. A lot of that is detailed in the book. As far as chucky, as a reporter i felt it was very necessary to maintain contact with all sides of the story. He is the accused, he is very much the center character, and we maintain what i describe as a cantankerous relationship over the years. He would call me sort of at all hours of the day and advise me the of this latest legal theories or his latest attempts to find his way out of the situation, but his situation was such that he will not see the light of day. He is appealed to the 11th circuit upheld the conviction. The Supreme Court will not have a case. He is even trying this last ditch effort said saying he did receive proper council. The actual criminal cop was remarkable to watch to see individuals would never been on an airplane, it would never been outside of liberia address a u. S. Jury, jury of americans approach them and show the physical scars and did receive a small measure of justice for what they lost. That was a lot of what i tried to cover in the book. Theres also a good deal about the history between canada and the u. S. State department, between taylor and the u. S. State department, but at the core it is a personal sort of what happens when a father and son relationship fail on such a dramatic stage as a civil war. Questions, anybody . Come straight up to the microphone. [inaudible] incuriosity and writing ability. Me ask you about sierra leone which i thought was held in stable relationship to other countries in the region, but in contention of the british troops. Was that true . For a long time i thought british trips i dont want to speak to much about sierra leone because im not an expert. I do know that taylor sponsored a proxy war in sierra leone started in the early 90s your he had a very fraught relationship with the leader there. And he pursued that were basically until around 2001 that became his undoing. It was essentially a sort of tragic flaws as a leader. He pursued this war. Even chucky, one thing he vehemently denied any was any connection with the war in sierra leone. And his commanders said essentially that was true, just because his father would not entrust responsibility strategically delicate as a fat. Any other questions . I look forward to reading your book. I served at the u. S. Embassy in liberia from 20072010, and have heard im sure many of the same kinds of stories you heard. You probably heard more than i did. A couple of questions. One is did you gain any insight into how this young man who grew up in a suburb in florida, you know, was capable of committing those horrible atrocities . Its just shocking to me. If anybody can go that way but how did this individual go that way . Was that the impunity of being his fathers son, are what . Could you talk a little bit about that . And then i had a second may be shorter question. We in amnesty were involved with giving visas to the witnesses prosecution and defense witnesses, recalls thought none of prosecution witnesses will ever come home. You know young men who had been raped. They will not come home after they came here and told the world that theyve been raped. And i heard every single prosecution witness did return to liberia. I also heard that chuckys defense witnesses disappeared in america. And i wonder if thats good . Yes. So yes, i mean, you know, to the first question, sort of the central questions when youre dealing with an individual who has committed these crimes, youre forming a personal relationship with him, like how are they capable of this. I tried to approach the question from a few different angles. One was speaking to people who came of age within. His girlfriend, eventual wife. I think on a clinical level there some Mental Illness there, untreated Mental Illness thats what it takes away the mystery surrounding evil but i think that is the case. To question the impunity is really big. When chucky was a teenager in orlando, he held up a father and son come and he pointed a gun at them come and his friends were telling him do it do it do it. And he didnt do it. The reason i think he didnt do it was because we had this famous case called the rule of law and interested the context he was in. Flash forward to liberia, there wasnt rule of law. If anything could be said to be alone, it was Charles Taylor. And within that environment he wasnt even beholden to tailors most senior commanders. He could literally do with the one. The embassy reported diligently on the emergence of chucky and that he was feared by everyone taylor insiders included. And i should mention that a huge resource in reporting this book was the state Department Cables dating back to 1980 going all the way up to 2011. And that provided a sort of insight into the perception of this individual, the perception of the taylor regime, and also that people were not connecting the dots that he was an american, until very late, and it was very much that moment that provided the federal investigators involved the platform to pursue this case. Is this the first time an american has been charged . Yes, under this particular statute. This was a law that was passed basically to uphold our ratification of the convention against torture. It was the same law that the office of Legal Counsel sort of advice in terms of enhanced interrogation program, and this case was the first of its kind. Chucky really took issue with the fact that he was being charged under the statute while american officials were not. He even wanted to introduce guidance provided pretrial the judge would never. She just wasnt interested. He raised the issue of the tapes destroyed by the cia but none of it had any impact on the trial. The second question regarding the witnesses, you know it was really compelling to see the prosecution witnesses in particular the opening witness basically said i just want to go back to liberia. I want to lead my life but i felt i had to do this. By defense witnesses, these were chuckys colleagues and cohorts some of them were human rights abusers, and to be honest i was surprised they were brought to the u. S. But he had a right to a defense. These individuals were integral to that but at the moment when they could step up and defend their commander, they split. Half of them disappeared into the ether is. As one of the guys who stuck around and was eventually thrown into prison before being deported he explained that they came to miami. To put up in a hotel and they very quickly make no friends and some slipped across the border and are intended to. The rest i dont know. One i know was caught and deported. But i think thats common unicode there are lots of novel things about this case and i think that was one of them, how to deal with witnesses. How to get someone who is accused of such heinous crimes an adequate defense. These are the things that need to be worked out. I have a question that was somewhat similar to her first one. Im originally from orlando, florida, so i found it interesting that a person like that could go to liberia and commit all these atrocities. You spoke a little bit about his personality, so i guess i was just interested to your perspective on if it remained in orlando and if it pursued a life of crime how different do you think his life would have and out had he stayed an icon over to africa . I mean you know, the strongest baseline i have with that is individuals he was with the nike of those two guys and all of those, most of those guys entered the penal system in some form for bride of christ. He was on a trajectory. He was in a game. He was using guns. I think that was his mothers concern. She knew the path he was on. Unfortunately, the alex was west africa. It was his father. It was liberia. Thats what created the sort of environment and opportunities for him to become what he became became. Im sorry, i dont know if Charles Taylors early life. Could you fill us in on how an african dictator into with an american son in orlando . Sure. C