CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. authorities on Tuesday charged a policeman accused of torturing suspects with perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying in a civil suit brought by one of the tortured men.

Former Chicago Police Lt. Jon Burge, 60, whose activities were once called to the attention of the United Nations, was arrested at his home near Tampa, Florida. He could face up to 45 years in prison if convicted of the three criminal counts.

Burge was acquitted of brutality in a Chicago trial 20 years ago, but was subsequently fired by the police department in 1993. He still receives a $30,000 annual police pension.

Special prosecutors appointed in 2002 documented more than 100 cases of brutality involving Burge and other police officers who worked on Chicago’s South Side. While prosecutors claimed several officers elicited confessions from mostly black suspects through torture, they said the statute of limitations had run out and no one was charged.

The suspects were beaten by mostly white detectives with telephone books, suffocated with plastic typewriter covers, burned with cigarettes, threatened with mock executions, and suffered electric shocks to their genitals.

“There is no place for torture and abuse in a police station. There is no place for perjury and false statements in federal lawsuits,” U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said. “No person is above the law, and nobody -- even a suspected murderer -- is beneath its protection. The alleged criminal conduct by defendant Burge goes to the core principles of our criminal justice system.”

In a federal indictment, Burge was accused of lying about his knowledge of the torture in a 2003 deposition for a civil suit brought by Madison Hobley.

The torture allegations led former Illinois Gov. George Ryan to pardon four men, including Hobley, who confessed to murder after being tortured. Ryan also cleared the state’s death row because of a pattern of faulty prosecutions.

While he was a Illinois state legislator, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama helped pass a state law requiring videotaping of police interrogations.

Victims’ attorneys presented information about the brutality case to a United Nations commission on human rights in 2005, which called on the U.S. government to investigate.