US charges two former Syrian officials for allegedly torturing Americans and Syrian nationals

Two former high-ranking Syrian intelligence officials have been charged with war crimes for allegedly torturing Americans and other civilians who were deemed enemies by the Syrian government and held in a military prison, the Department of Justice said Monday.

Two former high-ranking Syrian intelligence officials have been charged with war crimes for allegedly torturing Americans and other civilians who were deemed enemies by the Syrian government and held in a military prison, the Department of Justice said Monday. US prosecutors say the two officials in former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime oversaw operations of the detention facilities at the Mezzeh Military Airport near Damascus, where detainees were beaten, electrocuted, hung by their wrists, burned with acid and had their toenails removed. The alleged crimes occurred during the civil war that wracked the country for over a decade and culminated in the extraordinary fall of the Assad regime over the weekend. Former Syrian air force intelligence officers Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65, “created an atmosphere of terror at Mezzeh Prison,” prosecutors said. They were charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes through cruel and inhuman treatment, according to an unsealed indictment filed in federal court in Chicago. Warrants for their arrests have been issued, and they remain at large, the Justice Department said. “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,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The Justice Department has a long memory, and we will never stop working to find and bring to justice those who tortured Americans,” he said. The alleged torture occurred between January 2012 and July 2019 against perceived enemies of the Assad regime — which included predominantly Syrian nationals but also foreign nationals and dual nationals, including US citizens, according to the indictment.