US court sentences ex-Syrian official who ran notorious ‘punishment wing’ to 60 years

This article contains descriptions of torture. A US federal court in Los Angeles sentenced a former Syrian government official who ran one of the country’s most infamous prisons to 60 years in prison on Thursday – the most significant punishment handed to an official of ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s regime by a foreign court and to a defendant present in person.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 “punishment wing”, known as “Wing 13”, 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.“The conduct was heinous, unimaginably cruel and almost unspeakably violent and brutal,” said Hernan D Vera, a US district judge, before delivering the sentence.Al-Sheikh’s legal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Assistant attorney general A Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s criminal division said in a statement the sentence sends a clear message: “Human 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.”Al-Sheikh, 74, who also served as governor of Syria’s 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.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.Since then, Syria’s new government has held a number of in absentia trials for former regime officials in connection to crimes committed during the country’s years-long civil war, which killed about half a million people and displaced half the country’s 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’s collapse.Other factions in Syria’s civil war have also been accused of abuse of detainees, including insurgent groups and the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.During al-Sheikh’s 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.Others testified that they were placed on a device known as a “magic carpet” or “flying carpet” 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 “magic carpet” or “flying carpet” 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.“[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’s largest prison,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. “[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.”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.“I still hear the screams of others begging for mercy,” said one of the men, Nidal Shikhani.“Even though 20 years have passed, I still live in the prison of my memory,” said another, Sultan Abdul Malek. “I suffer from sudden panic attacks and constant anxiety.”His brother, Khaled Abdul Malek, who was taken to “Wing 13” 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.“My 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,” he said. Several witnesses also submitted testimony on al-Sheikh’s 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 “a person of integrity, compassion, and generosity to his family and community”, his attorneys wrote.Prosecutors had asked the court for a minimum sentence of 80 years; al-Sheikh’s attorneys had called for a five-year sentence, citing his poor health and noting that he was willing to be deported to Syria.“Whatever moral weight this case carries in the broader arc of history – however much the world, or the victims, or the public might wish the sentence to ‘send a message’ – that desire cannot be the foundation of a just sentence,” the defense team wrote in a memo to the court.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.“This case sends a message both to the new government of Syria and to other victims that justice is possible,” said Ela Matthews, an attorney at the Center for Justice and Accountability, which represented several victims. “The 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.”