L’former head of Syria’s notorious Adra prison, 72-year-old Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in California on several torture-related charges. The man, who was responsible for running the prison from 2005 to 2008, was arrested on July 10 at Los Angeles International Airport for visa fraud.
As director of Adra Prison, al-Sheikh allegedly ordered his subordinates to inflict pain and was directly involved in inflicting severe physical and mental suffering on prisoners. For example, he ordered prisoners to go to the “punishment wing”, where they were beaten while hanging from the ceiling with their arms outstretched and subjected to a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist, sometimes causing fractures of the spine spinal cord, federal officials reported.
Al-Sheikh began his career working in police command posts before being transferred to Syria’s state security apparatus, which focused on combating political dissent, officials said. He later became head of Adra prison and brigadier general in 2005. In 2011, he was appointed governor of Deir ez-Zour, a region northeast of the Syrian capital of Damascus where there have been violent crackdowns against protesters.
“It’s a huge step towards justice,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the US-based Syrian Emergency Task Force. “The trial of Samir Ousman al-Sheikh will reiterate that the United States will not allow war criminals to come and live here without accountability, even if their victims were not US citizens,” he added, quoted by CBS News .