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LOS ANGELES (CN) — The former head of a Syrian prison, already jailed in California on visa fraud charges, has been indicted for torturing political prisoners and other detainees at the Damascus facility.
Samir Ousman Alsheikh, 72, was the head of Damascus Central Prison, known as Adra Prison, from about 2005 through 2008. He is charged with ordering his subordinates to inflict severe physical and mental pain and suffering on political and other prisoners, according to a statement Thursday by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
Alsheikh is also accused with participating in the torture of prisoners himself at times.
“The allegations in this superseding indictment of grave human rights abuses are chilling,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said. “Our country will not be a safe harbor for those accused of committing atrocities abroad.”
Prosecutors accuse Alsheikh of ordering detainees to Adra Prison’s “Punishment Wing,” where they were beaten while suspended from the ceiling with their arms extended and were 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.
“Our client vehemently denies these politically motivated and false accusations,” Nina Marino, an attorney for Alsheikh, said in a statement. “In filing these false charges, this Justice Department has chosen to allocate precious government resources towards the prosecution of a foreign national for alleged crimes that occurred in a foreign country against non-American citizens, and in so doing, diverts those same resources that could be used to protect American citizens from criminal conduct occurring in America.”
Marino added they were hopeful that the incoming Department of Government Efficiency commission will take a hard look at what she called misguided use of limited government resources.
Alsheikh purportedly held a variety of positions in the Syrian police and the Syrian state security apparatus, according to the U.S. attorney’s office, and he was associated with the Syrian Ba’ath Party that ruled Syria until this month. He was appointed governor of the province of Deir Ez-Zour by then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, and he immigrated to the U.S. four years ago.
“Alsheikh’s conduct as head of one of Syria’s largest prisons predates the Arab Spring and the beginning of the bloody Syrian civil war in 2011,” a special agent with the Homeland Security Department said in an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant for Alsheikh earlier this year. “However, even before the civil war began, the Assad regime worked to repress opposition to the government, and political dissidents (as well as ordinary criminals) were imprisoned at Adra Prison.”
Assad’s rule ended this month after Russia and Iran, his long-standing allies, failed to come this aid as rebel groups coming from the north of Syria in a lightning campaign captured the country’s main cities.
In the wake of the dictator’s departure, thousands of Syrians have flocked to the country’s notorious prisons to search for relatives and loved ones who in some cases were detained decades ago and never heard of again.
An estimated 150,000 people have been detained or reported missing in Syria since 2011. Under Assad’s rule, any whiff of dissent could send someone to prison immediately. For years, it was a sentence akin to death, as few ever emerged from the system.
Citing testimony from freed prisoners and prison officials, Amnesty International has reported that thousands of Syrians were killed in frequent mass executions. Prisoners were subjected to constant torture, intense beatings and rape. Inmates frequently died from injuries, disease or starvation. Some fell into psychosis and starved themselves, the human rights group said.
Alsheikh was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in July on a visa fraud charges, for lying to immigration authorities about his time running the Syrian prison. He has been in federal custody since his arrest.
Attorneys for Alsheikh didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the new charges.
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