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He was a former Syrian military officer who oversaw a prison where alleged human rights violations took place loaded on multiple counts of torture after he was arrested in July on visa fraud charges, authorities said Thursday.
Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria’s infamous Adra prison from 2005 to 2008 under recently dismissed President Bashar al-Assad was indicted by a federal grand jury in California on multiple counts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture.
“It’s a big step towards justice,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the US-based Syrian Emergency Task Force. “The trial of Samir Ousman al-Sheikh will reiterate that the United States will not allow war criminals to come to 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 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 stalked anyone . in Syriaaccording to a criminal complaint. He had purchased a one-way plane ticket out of 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 centers, including the torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.
The government fell in a sudden rebel offensive last Sunday, ending 50 years of rule by the Assad family and sending the former president fleeing to Russia. Since then, the insurgents have freed tens of thousands of prisoners from facilities in several cities.
In his role as head of Adra prison, al-Sheikh allegedly ordered subordinates to inflict pain and was directly involved in inflicting severe physical and mental pain on prisoners.
He ordered the prisoners to the “punishment wing,” where they were beaten while suspended from the ceiling with outstretched arms and subjected to a device that bent their bodies in half at the waist, sometimes causing -se spinal fractures, according to federal officials.
“Our client vehemently denies these false and politically motivated allegations,” his attorney, Nina Marino, said in an emailed statement.
Marino called the case a “misuse” of government resources by the Justice Department for the “prosecution of an alien for alleged crimes that occurred in a foreign country against non-US citizens.”
US authorities accused two Syrian officials of running a prison and torture center at Mezzeh Air Base in the capital Damascus, in an indictment unsealed on Monday. The victims included Syrians, Americans and dual nationals, 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 senior Syrian officials to life in prison in absentia 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 countering political dissent, officials said. He later became the head of Adra prison and a brigadier general in 2005. In 2011, he was appointed governor of Deir ez-Zour, a region northeast of the Syrian capital Damascus, where there violent repression against the demonstrators.
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 on the conspiracy to commit torture charge and each of the three counts of torture, plus a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison on each of the two counts of immigration fraud .
