The son of the brutal former President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, has been convicted of torture by a US court in the first case of its kind on American soil.

Charles Taylor Jr, also known as 'Chuckie' faces life in prison after being found guilty of torture, firearms and conspiracy charges in the first trial brought under a 1994 US law allowing prosecution for torture and atrocities committed overseas.

He was accused of being involved in killings and torture while head of an Antiterrorist Unit known as the Demon Forces, whose job it was to silence opposition to his father's rule.

Between 1999 and 2002 he and his forces inflicted acts of immense cruelty on people accused of being anti-Taylor rebels or sympathisers. Favourite methods of torture included dripping molten plastic on their victims, stabbing them with bayonets, using electric shocks and hot irons and even shovelling biting ants onto their bodies.

In a separate trial at The Hague, Charles Taylor Sr is charged with 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.

A succession of African witnesses described Chuckie's involvement in at least three killings and torture at their base, known as Gbatala, where prisoners were often held in pits partially filled with water and covered with iron bars and barbed wire.

"I want the world to know what happened to me so it will not happen again in the future," said Rufus Kpadeh, a former prisoner at Gbatala. He showed jurors scars on his arms from molten plastic he said was dripped on him.

R. Alexander Acosta, a Miama lawyer said the case, which was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and FBI agents who travelled the world finding victims and witnesses, would serve as a model for future prosecutors involving foreign torture allegations.

"It is truly historic. It's the first case of its kind, but it won't be the last of its kind," said Mr Acosta.

In Monrovia, Laurence Bropleh, the Liberian Information Minister said: "The government believes his conviction sends out a strong signal that international human rights standards must be respected by citizens of every country wherever they find themselves."

Mr Taylor did not testify in his own defense. His court-appointed lawyers suggested that many of the witnesses lied in a bid to win political asylum in the United States or to settle political vendettas against his father's government..

Chuckie is a U.S. citizen who was born in 1977 in Boston to a girlfriend of his father, who was a college student there at the time. His mother later remarried and moved the family to Orlando.

Court records show Taylor Jr was involved in a long string of crimes, eventually leaving the US. to join his father in Liberia in 1997. After the his father was persuaded by the Bush administration to leave office in August 2003, Chuckie fled to Trinidad and eventually decided to return to the U.S.

The torture trial took place in Miami because he arrived in 2006 with a passport he obtained after giving a false name for his father on its application. He pleaded guilty to passport fraud and was sentenced to 11 months in prison, then stood trial on the torture indictment.

Charles Taylor Sr came to power in 1997 after a long civil war marked by atrocities. He led the rebel National Patriotic Front of Liberia, notorious for its bloody campaign to depose Samuel Doe, the President. Mr Taylor is believed to be one of the first warlords to recruit child soldiers, who were organised into a Small Boys Unit. He was allegedly involved in arms sales for blood diamonds, and has been accused of ordering his troops to eat enemies they captured.

Times Recommends

• Rio Tinto four held as China prepares case
• Diplomats must keep heads down and trousers up
• When in Rome should one make like Berlusconi?