Los Angeles (AP) Authorities announced Thursday that a former Syrian military official who was arrested in July on suspicion of visa fraud has been charged with multiple counts of torture after overseeing a prison where alleged human rights violations occurred.
Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria s infamous Adra Prison from 2005 to 2008 underrecently oustedPresident Bashar Assad, was charged by a federal grand jury with several counts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture.
According to Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force based in the United States, it’s a significant step in the right direction. Samir Ousman al-Sheikh s trial will reiterate 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 U.S. citizens.
Federal officials detained the 72-year-old in July at Los Angeles International Airport on charges of immigration fraud, specifically that he denied on his U.S. visa and citizenship applications that he had ever persecuted anyone in Syria, according to a criminal complaint. On July 10, he had bought a one-way ticket to leave LAX for Beirut, Lebanon.
The Syrian government has been under fire from human rights organizations and UN representatives for alleged widespread abuses in its prison facilities, including torture and the arbitrary arrest of thousands of detainees, frequently without telling their relatives.
FILE – Arab league observers, with orange vests, oversee the releasing of Syrian prisoners as they leave Adra Prison on the north-east outskirts of Damascus, Syria, on Jan. 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Bassem Tellawi, File)
Pictured by Bassem Tellawi/Associated Press
Last Sunday, a swift rebel offensive overthrew the government, ending the Assad family’s 50-year dominance and forcing the former president to flee to Russia. Since then, tens of thousands of detainees have been released by insurgents from prisons in several locations.
Al-Sheikh allegedly directed staff members to cause inmates excruciating physical and psychological suffering while serving as the head of Adra Prison. He also allegedly participated directly in this practice.
He ordered prisoners to the Punishment Wing, where they were beaten while suspended from the ceiling with their arms extended and were subjected to a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist, sometimes resulting in fractured spines, according to federal officials.
According to an emailed statement from his attorney, Nina Marino, “Our client vehemently denies these politically motivated and false accusations.”
Marino saw the case as an example of the U.S. Justice Department misusing government resources to prosecute a foreign national for alleged crimes against non-American citizens that took place in another country.
U.S. authorities accused two Syrian officials of running a prison and torture center at the Mezzeh air force base in the capital of Damascusin an indictment unsealed Monday. Victims included Syrians, Americans and dual citizens, including 26-year-old American aid worker Layla Shweikani, according to prosecutors and the Syrian Emergency Task Force.
Federal prosecutors said they had issued arrest warrants for the two officials, who remain at large.
In May, a French court sentencedthree high-ranking Syrian officialsin absentia to life in prison for complicity in war crimes in a largely symbolic but landmark case againstAssad s regimeand the first such case in Europe.
Al-Sheikh began his career working police command posts before transferring to Syria s state security apparatus, which focused on countering political dissent, officials said. He later became head 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 of Damascus, where there were violent crackdowns against protesters.
The indictment alleges that al-Sheikh immigrated to the U.S. 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 each of the three torture charges, plus a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each of the two immigration fraud charges.
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