A US federal court has sentenced a former head of a notorious Syrian prison to 60 years in prison on torture and immigration fraud charges, the country’s Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a statement on Thursday. The convicted man, Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, is 74 years old and has lived in the United States since 2020. According to the charges, he served as head of Damascus Central Prison, locally known as Adra Prison, from 2005 to 2008, where prisoners were allegedly subjected to horrific torture in its “punishment wing.”
The DOJ said a jury this March found al-Sheikh guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit torture, three counts of torture, one count of visa fraud, and one count of attempted fraud in the naturalisation process. During the trial, three former prisoners testified in court, describing torture they suffered at al-Sheikh’s hands as well as torture inflicted on other prisoners at the facility.
US assistant attorney general A. Tycen Duva said the sentence handed down in the case reflects the courage of the torture survivors. Alongside the torture charges, al-Sheikh was also found guilty of giving false information about his past when entering the United States; the case alleged that he concealed his history and gave false information on entering the country in 2020. Duva said the case sends a clear message that human-rights violators cannot find safe refuge in the United States, adding that such individuals would be identified and brought to justice for their serious crimes.
A coalition led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies overthrew Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government in late 2024, after which many Syrian citizens rushed to the country’s prisons in search of missing relatives.