US indictment accuses two Syrian officials of torture at notorious prison
WASHINGTON — US prosecutors accuse two senior Syrian officials of overseeing a notorious torture prison peaceful demonstrators and other political prisoners, including a 26-year-old American woman who was later believed to have been executed.
The indictment was unveiled on Monday, two days after Syria was overthrown by a shock rebel offensive President Bashar Assad. The US, UN and others accuse him of it widespread human rights violations in a 13-year battle to crush opposition forces seeking his removal from power.
The war, which started in 2011 as a largely nonviolent popular uprising, has killed half a million people.
The indictment, filed Nov. 18 in federal court in Chicago, would be the U.S. government’s first against what officials say were networks of Assad intelligence and military branches and other allied groups that arrested, tortured and killed thousands of perceived enemies.
It names Jamil Hassan, director of the Syrian Air Force’s intelligence department, who prosecutors say oversaw a prison and torture center at the Mezzeh air base in the capital Damascus, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, who prosecutors say ran the prison.
The indictment accuses the two of conspiring to commit cruel and inhumane treatment of civilian prisoners during Syria’s civil war. Inmates at the prison were whipped, kicked, electrocuted, burned and subjected to other mental and physical abuse, including being housed in cells next to the corpses of dead inmates, prosecutors allege.
Victims included Syrians, Americans and people with dual nationalities, the indictment said. The U.S.-based Syrian Emergency Task Force has long urged federal prosecutors to take action in the cases, including that of 26-year-old American aid worker Layla Shweikani.
The group presented witnesses who testified to Shweikani’s torture in prison in 2016. Syrian rights groups believe she was later executed in the Saydnaya military prison on the outskirts of Damascus.
“Now is our time to arrest these criminals and bring them to the United States for trial,” the Syrian Emergency Task Force said in a statement on Monday. The group’s leader, Mouaz Moustafa, said his relatives were among those tortured in prison.
Federal prosecutors said they had issued arrest warrants for the two officials, who remain at large.
The prospects for bringing them to justice were unclear. The overthrow of Assad by rebels last weekend scattered his government and left civilians stranded search for torture centers in prisons across the country in search of survivors and evidence.