Former Syrian official arrested in California who oversaw prison charged with torture

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where alleged human rights abuses took place has been charged with several counts of torture after being arrested in July for visa fraud charges, authorities said Thursday.

Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria’s infamous Adra Prison from 2005 to 2008 under recently ousted President Bashar Assad, was charged by a federal grand jury with several counts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture.

“It’s a huge step toward justice,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the U.S.-based Syrian Emergency Task Force. “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. He had purchased a one-way plane ticket to depart LAX on July 10, en route to Beirut, Lebanon.

Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, 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, putting an end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family and sending the former president fleeing to Russia. Insurgents have freed tens of thousands of prisoners from facilities in multiple cities since then.

In his role as the head of Adra Prison, al-Sheikh allegedly ordered subordinates to inflict and was directly involved in inflicting severe physical and mental pain on prisoners.

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.

“Our client vehemently denies these politically motivated and false accusations,” his lawyer, Nina Marino, said in an emailed statement.

Marino called the case a “misguided use” of government resources by the U.S. Justice Department for the “prosecution of a foreign national for alleged crimes that occurred in a foreign country against non-American citizens.”

U.S. authorities accused two Syrian officials of running a prison and torture center at the Mezzeh air force base in the capital of Damascus in 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 sentenced three high-ranking Syrian officials in absentia to life in prison for complicity in war crimes in a largely symbolic but landmark case against Assad’s regime and 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.