The former head of a notorious Syrian prison was charged Thursday in the United States with torturing opponents of the now-collapsed government of Bashar al-Assad, the Justice Department said.
Samir Ousman Alsheikh, 72, who has been in the US since 2020, allegedly ran Damascus Central Prison — known colloquially as Adra Prison — from approximately 2005 to 2008, where detainees were subjected to horrific abuse in the “Punishment Wing.”
The charges come days after Assad fled the country as his government crumbled, and as millions of Syrians begin a reckoning with decades of repression.
Alsheikh personally inflicted severe physical and mental pain on detainees, as well as ordering his staff to carry out such acts, US prosecutors said.
Under Alsheikh, prisoners were beaten while hung from the ceiling, or subjected to a device known as the “Flying Carpet,” which folded their bodies in half at the waist, causing excruciating pain and sometimes resulting in fractured spines.
“We are one step closer to holding him accountable for those heinous crimes. The United States will never be a safe haven for those who commit human rights abuses abroad,” said Eddy Wang, special agent in charge of the Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles field office.
Alsheikh faces three counts of torture and one count of conspiracy to commit torture. He was arrested in July at the Los Angeles airport on separate immigration fraud charges.
If convicted, he could be jailed for up to 20 years for each of the torture charges.
The Justice Department said Alsheikh held a variety of positions in the Syrian police and the Syrian state security apparatus.
He was also associated with the Syrian Ba’ath Party that ruled the country, and had been appointed governor of the province of Deir Ez-Zour by Assad in 2011.
He moved to the United States in 2020 and applied for citizenship in 2023.
A simmering civil war in Syria erupted late last month with a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group and its allies.
After racing through several major cities, the rebels quickly swept Damascus, sending Assad fleeing to Russia and bringing a sudden end to five decades of repressive rule by his clan.
Syrians have since flocked to prisons searching for missing loved ones.
Tens of thousands of people died of torture or as a result of the conditions of their detention in prisons under Assad’s rule since the civil war erupted in 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
