A former Syrian authorities official has been charged with torture within the United States, authorities stated Thursday.
Samir Ousman Alsheikh, who oversaw the Damascus Central Prison from 2005 to 2008, was indicted by a federal grand jury on a number of counts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture.
American authorities known as the fees in opposition to Alsheikh “chilling.”
He was arrested earlier this yr at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on two counts of immigration fraud and had bought a one-way ticket from LAX to Beirut, Lebanon.
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, Alsheikh hid his employment on the jail and denied stalking anybody in his functions for visas and U.S. citizenship.
U.S. officers say Alsheikh personally inflicted “extreme bodily and psychological ache and struggling on political and different prisoners” in his position below ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
He allegedly ordered inmates to the jail’s “punishment wing,” the place they had been crushed whereas suspended from the ceiling and subjected to a tool that induced “excruciating ache,” generally leading to a fractured backbone.
“Nearly 20 years in the past, the defendant was accused of torturing prisoners in Syria and, in the present day, we’re one step nearer to holding him accountable for these heinous crimes,” stated the Special Agent in Charge of the HSI Los Angeles Field Office Angeles, Eddy Wang. stated in a press release.
If convicted, Alsheikh faces as much as 20 years in jail for conspiracy to commit torture; as much as 20 years for every of the three torture costs; and as much as 10 years for every of the 2 immigration fraud costs.
In a press release to The Associated Press, Alsheikh’s lawyer says he “vehemently denies these politically motivated false allegations.”
The 72-year-old moved to the United States in 2020 and was dwelling in Lexington, South Carolina, court docket information present.
This comes after 1000’s of prisoners had been freed by insurgent forces throughout Syria following the autumn of the Assad regime.
Videos confirmed dozens of inmates being freed, whereas different footage additionally confirmed folks working to prisons within the hope of discovering their lacking family members.
Human rights teams and United Nations officers have beforehand accused Syria’s former authorities of widespread jail abuses.
The UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated practically 60,000 folks had been tortured and killed in prisons run by Assad.
Syrian insurgent forces stated on Thursday they plan to shut notoriously harsh prisons and search out these concerned in killing or torturing detainees.
