A US federal grand jury in Los Angeles on Thursday indicted a Syrian man who officials say headed a notorious prison and charged him with torture, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release.
The Syrian man, 72, is accused of ordering his subordinates to inflict “severe physical and mental pain and suffering on political and other prisoners,” the DOJ said, adding that the accused sometimes inflicted the torture himself. In the US system a grand jury is a group of citizens that decides whether evidence is sufficient to charge someone.
Court documents showed that the man, a resident of Lexington, South Carolina in the south-east part of the United States, was head of the Damascus Central Prison, known as the Adra Prison from 2005 -2008. He held a variety of positions in the Syrian police and state security apparatus and was associated with the now deposed leader Bashar al-Assad and his Ba’ath Party that ruled Syria.
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The accused allegedly ordered some prisoners to the prison’s “punishment wing,” where they “were beaten while suspended from the ceiling with their arms extended and were subjected to a device known as the ‘Flying Carpet,’ which folded their bodies in half at the waist, causing excruciating pain and sometimes resulting in fractured spines,” the DOJ statement read.
DOJ: Alleged torture politically motivated
The department said the man “is charged with torturing political dissidents and other prisoners to deter opposition” to al-Assad’s regime, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri said. She is head of the DOJ’s Criminal Division.
The indictment says the man allegedly immigrated to the United States in 2020 and applied for US citizenship in 2023 but lied about his crimes to obtain a US green card, or permanent residency.
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