A former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where human rights violations allegedly took place has been charge with multiple counts of torture after being arrested in July for visa fraud, authorities announced Thursday.
Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria’s notorious Adra prison from 2005 to 2008 under recently ousted President Bashar al-Assad has been indicted by a federal grand jury in California on multiple counts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture.
“This is a big step toward justice,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the U.S.-based Syrian Contingency Task Force. “The trial of Samir Ousman al-Sheikh will reaffirm that the United States will not allow war criminals to come and live in the United States without accountability, even if their victims were not American citizens. »
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Federal officials arrested the 72-year-old man in July at Los Angeles International Airport on charges of immigration fraud, specifically because he had denied in his U.S. visa and citizenship applications that he had ever persecuted anyone. whatever. in Syriaaccording to a criminal complaint. He had purchased a one-way plane ticket to leave LAX on July 10, en route to Beirut, Lebanon.
Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread violations in its detention centers, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.
The government fell to a sudden rebel offensive last Sunday, ending the Assad family’s 50-year rule and forcing the former president to flee to Russia. Since then, insurgents have freed tens of thousands of prisoners from facilities in several cities.
As director of Adra Prison, al-Sheikh allegedly ordered his subordinates to inflict suffering and was directly involved in inflicting severe physical and mental suffering on prisoners.
He ordered the prisoners to be transferred to the “punishment wing”, where they were beaten while hanging from the ceiling with their arms outstretched, and subjected to a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist, sometimes leading to spinal fractures, according to federal officials.
“Our client vehemently denies these false, politically motivated accusations,” his lawyer, Nina Marino, said in an emailed statement.
Marino called the case a “misguided use” of government resources by the Justice Department to “prosecute a foreign national for alleged crimes committed in a foreign country against non-U.S. citizens.”
U.S. authorities accused two Syrian officials of running a prison and torture center at Mezzeh Air Base in the capital Damascus in an indictment made public Monday. The victims included Syrians, Americans and dual nationals, including Layla Shweikani, a 26-year-old American aid worker, according to prosecutors and the Syrian Emergency Task Force.
Federal prosecutors said they have issued arrest warrants for the two officials, who remain at large.
In May, a French court sentenced three senior Syrian officials in absentia to life in prison for complicity in war crimes in a largely symbolic but historic case against the Assad regime and the first such case in Europe.
Al-Sheikh began his career working in police command posts before transferring to Syria’s state security apparatus, which focused on combating political dissent, officials said. He then became director of Adra prison and brigadier general in 2005. In 2011, he was appointed governor of Deir ez-Zour, a region northeast of the Syrian capital Damascus, where protesters have been violently repressed.
The indictment alleges that al-Sheikh immigrated to the United States in 2020 and applied for citizenship in 2023.
If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the conspiracy to commit torture charge and for each of the three torture charges, plus a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each of the two charges of immigration fraud.