\n<\/p>\n
A US federal court in Los Angeles sentenced a former Syrian government official who ran one of the country\u2019s most infamous prisons to 60 years in prison on Thursday \u2013 the most significant punishment handed to an official of ousted president Bashar al-Assad\u2019s regime by a foreign court and to a defendant present in person.<\/p>\n
Samir Ousman al-Sheikh was the head of the Adra prison, on the outskirts of Damascus, between 2005 and 2008, when he oversaw an underground \u201cpunishment wing\u201d, known as \u201cWing 13\u201d, in which prisoners and regime opponents were interrogated and tortured as he watched through surveillance cameras. A federal jury convicted al-Sheikh last March of having tortured prisoners and then lying about it in US immigration forms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe conduct was heinous, unimaginably cruel and almost unspeakably violent and brutal,\u201d said Hernan D Vera, a US district judge, before delivering the sentence.<\/p>\n
Al-Sheikh\u2019s legal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Assistant attorney general A Tysen Duva of the justice department\u2019s criminal division said in a statement the sentence sends a clear message: \u201cHuman rights violators who come to the United States will receive no safe harbor here. We will find them, and they will be prosecuted and punished for their heinous crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Al-Sheikh, 74, who also served as governor of Syria\u2019s Deir Ez-Zour province in 2011, at a time of violent regime crackdowns against protesters, moved to the United States in 2020, obtained a green card and applied for US citizenship. He was arrested in July 2024 at Los Angeles international airport on immigration fraud charges and prosecutors later added four-torture related charges.<\/p>\n
He is the first al-Assad regime official to go to trial in the US and the highest ranking regime official to be tried anywhere in the world in person. Al-Assad was ousted by a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024 which toppled the regime in just 11 days.<\/p>\n
Since then, Syria\u2019s new government has held a number of in absentia trials for former regime officials in connection to crimes committed during the country\u2019s years-long civil war, which killed about half a million people and displaced half the country\u2019s prewar population of 23 million. In August, a court sentenced al-Assad and his brother Maher to death for crimes against humanity and war crimes, but the two men have been in Moscow since the regime\u2019s collapse.<\/p>\n
Other factions in Syria\u2019s civil war have also been accused of abuse of detainees, including insurgent groups and the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.<\/p>\n
During al-Sheikh\u2019s nine-day trial, several victims and witnesses testified. They described guards folding prisoners into car tires, restraining and beating them. Some they said, were cuffed by their wrists to pipes on the ceiling, beaten with cables, and left suspended for extended periods of time.<\/p>\n
Others testified that they were placed on a device known as a \u201cmagic carpet\u201d or \u201cflying carpet\u201d which consisted of two large wooden panels with hinges in the middle onto which guards strapped prisoners, forcing the panels together to cause excruciating pain. One victim recalled al-Sheikh himself stomping on the device. Another testified he was subjected to the \u201cmagic carpet\u201d or \u201cflying carpet\u201d as punishment for writing a letter of support to a political prisoner and also forced to wear a red jumpsuit assigned to prisoners designated for execution, leading him to believe he was going to die.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Al-Sheikh] chose to serve the ruthless, repressive Assad regime in Syria throughout his professional life, including for four years as the warden of Syria\u2019s largest prison,\u201d prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. \u201c[He] knew that what he was doing was wrong. Nonetheless he ordered and participated in the torture of his victims because he had the power to do so and because he thought he would never be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several victims and witnesses also submitted written and video testimonies to the court ahead of the sentencing, in which they spoke of being haunted and traumatized by their experiences two decades later.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still hear the screams of others begging for mercy,\u201d said one of the men, Nidal Shikhani.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though 20 years have passed, I still live in the prison of my memory,\u201d said another, Sultan Abdul Malek. \u201cI suffer from sudden panic attacks and constant anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n
His brother, Khaled Abdul Malek, who was taken to \u201cWing 13\u201d twice during his four years at Adra prison, spoke of the physical and psychological scars he was left with, including chronic back pain and mobility problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy son Battal asks if he could ride my back and with a heart wrung with pain, I am forced to tell him I [am] no longer strong enough to carry him,\u201d he said. <\/strong><\/p>\n Several witnesses also submitted testimony on al-Sheikh\u2019s behalf, speaking about his age and frailty as they asked the court for leniency. More than 50 people sent letters of support to the court, describing him as \u201ca person of integrity, compassion, and generosity to his family and community\u201d, his attorneys wrote.<\/p>\n Prosecutors had asked the court for a minimum sentence of 80 years; al-Sheikh\u2019s attorneys had called for a five-year sentence, citing his poor health and noting that he was willing to be deported to Syria.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever moral weight this case carries in the broader arc of history \u2013 however much the world, or the victims, or the public might wish the sentence to \u2018send a message\u2019 \u2013 that desire cannot be the foundation of a just sentence,\u201d the defense team wrote in a memo to the court.<\/p>\n Al-Sheikh is one of only five people to be prosecuted under the extraterritorial Torture Act, which allows the US government to prosecute individuals physically present in the US over acts of torture committed abroad.<\/p>\n \u201cThis case sends a message both to the new government of Syria and to other victims that justice is possible,\u201d said Ela Matthews, an attorney at the Center for Justice and Accountability, which represented several victims. \u201cThe transitional justice process that is happening in Syria needs to continue to evolve and bring individuals like this to account, but in the US this sends a message that the rule of law is still functioning and that these types of cases are possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A US federal court in Los Angeles sentenced a former Syrian government official who ran one of the country\u2019s most infamous prisons to 60 years in prison on Thursday \u2013 the most significant punishment handed to an official of ousted president Bashar al-Assad\u2019s regime by a foreign court and to a defendant present in person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[160,25337,150,4893,5323,10303,4515,6293,2439,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-52297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-court","9":"tag-exsyrian","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-notorious","12":"tag-official","13":"tag-punishment","14":"tag-ran","15":"tag-sentences","16":"tag-wing","17":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}