A newly unsealed federal indictment in Chicago charges two Syrian government officials with war crimes for the torture and inhumane treatment of civilian detainees, including U.S. citizens, during the country’s civil war.
Syrian Air Force intelligence officers Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65, created an “atmosphere of terror” through torture at Mezzeh Prison near Damascus during the Syrian civil war from 2012 to 2019, according to the indictment, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
They are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit the war crime of cruel and inhuman treatment. Warrants have been issued for their arrest.
The indictment was handed down by a grand jury in November 2023. It wasn’t immediately clear why it was unsealed in Chicago on Monday. It comes days after rebels overthrew the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after a nearly 14-year civil war.
According to the indictment, Hassan and Mahmoud helped prop up the Assad regime through intimidation and punishment. Hassan, director of Syrian Air Force Intelligence, oversaw a network of prisons and detention facilities. Mahmoud was a brigadier general in the intelligence agency and was in charge of operations at Mezzeh Prison.
Together they and their co-conspirators agreed to “identify, intimidate, threaten, deter, punish, immobilize and kill” those suspected of aiding opponents of the regime, the indictment states.
Hassan and Mahmoud arrested many civilians who protested the Syrian regime. Victims detained at the prison included U.S. citizens, Syrian citizens and dual nationals, according to the indictment.
Detainees at the prison were beaten with hoses, cables and pipes, according to the indictment. They were electrocuted, burned and stripped naked. Their toenails were forcibly removed. Officials threatened the families of detainees with death and sexual assault to coerce false confessions.
Detainees were held in overcrowded cells, including with the bodies of prisoners who had died, the indictment states. They were denied adequate food, water and medical care.
Over the course of the conflict in Syria, there have been more than 15,000 documented cases of people dying due to torture and other ill-treatment, including U.S. citizens, according to the U.S. State Department.
The indictment does not name any victims, but Chicago-area aid worker and U.S. citizen Layla Shweikani was among those who died at the hands of the Assad regime. She was taken into Syrian custody in 2016 and ordered executed. The New York Times reported last year that the FBI had been conducting an investigation into Shweikani’s killing and had convened a grand jury. Shweikani also spent time at Mezzeh Prison, according to the report.
“The perpetrators of the Assad regime’s atrocities against American citizens and other civilians during the Syrian civil war must answer for their heinous crimes,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
“As alleged, these Assad regime intelligence officials whipped, kicked, electrocuted and burned their victims; hung them by their wrists for prolonged periods of time; threatened them with rape and death; and falsely told them that their family members had been killed. The Justice Department has a long memory, and we will never stop working to find and bring to justice those who tortured Americans.”
In a statement, the American Coalition for Syria, a human rights organization, applauded the arrest warrants for Hassan and Mahmoud, calling them a “landmark step” toward accountability.
“ACS welcomes the arrest warrants and hopes this will be a step towards attaining justice for the Shweikani family and for all those who have been disappeared, tortured and killed in the Assad regime’s notorious prisons,” the organization said.
Following the rebel overthrow of the Assad regime, videos have flooded social media showing thousands of detainees being released from those prisons. Crowds have begun to gather at some of the most notorious facilities, including the Saydnaya prison just north of Damascus, in hopes of finding loved ones.
Contributing: AP