A former Syrian military official who oversaw a notorious prison has been indicted in California on federal torture charges

He was a former Syrian military official supervising a prison where alleged human rights violations occurred Charged He is charged with multiple counts of torture after his arrest in July on charges of visa fraud, authorities said Thursday.

Samir Othman Al-Sheikh, who supervised the notorious Adra prison in Syria from 2005 to 2008 under He was recently ousted A federal grand jury in California indicted President Bashar al-Assad on multiple counts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture.

“It’s a big step toward justice,” said Moaz Mustafa, executive director of the US-based Syria Emergency Task Force. “The trial of Samir Othman Al-Sheikh will reaffirm that the United States will not allow war criminals to come and live in the United States without accountability, even if their victims are not American citizens.”

Federal officials arrested the 72-year-old in July at Los Angeles International Airport on immigration fraud charges, specifically because he denied on his U.S. visa and citizenship applications that he had ever persecuted anyone. In SyriaThis is based on a criminal complaint. He had purchased a round-trip plane ticket to depart Los Angeles International Airport on July 10, en route to Beirut, Lebanon.

Human rights groups and UN officials have accused the Syrian government of committing widespread violations 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 surprise rebel attack last Sunday, ending the Assad family’s 50-year rule and causing the former president to flee to Russia. The insurgents have freed tens of thousands of prisoners from facilities in multiple cities since then.

Through his position as head of Adra prison, Al-Sheikh allegedly ordered his subordinates to inflict pain and was directly involved in inflicting severe physical and mental pain on prisoners.

Prisoners were ordered to go to the “punishment wing,” where they were beaten while suspended from the ceiling with their arms outstretched, and subjected to a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist, sometimes resulting in spinal fractures, according to federal officials.

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

Marino called the case a “misleading use” of government resources by the Justice Department to “prosecute a foreign national for crimes alleged to have occurred in a foreign country against non-U.S. citizens.”

American authorities accused two Syrian officials of running a prison and torture center at the Mezzeh Air Base in the capital, Damascus, in an indictment revealed on Monday. The victims included Syrians, Americans and dual citizens, including 26-year-old American aid worker Laila Shweikani, according to prosecutors and the Syrian emergency team.

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 imprisonment for complicity in war crimes in a largely symbolic but historic case against the Assad regime, the first of its kind in Europe.

Officials said that Al-Sheikh began his career working in leadership positions in the police before moving to the Syrian State Security Service, which focused on combating political opposition. He later became head of Adra prison and dean in 2005. In 2011, he was appointed governor of Deir ez-Zor, a region northeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus, where there have been violent crackdowns on protesters.

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 torture counts, as well as a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison on each of the two immigration fraud counts.