Syrian military officials charged with war crimes as government falls

Washington: The Justice Department has charged two top Syrian military officials with war crimes committed against Americans and others at a notorious prison in Damascus, Syria, during the Syrian civil war, according to an indictment unsealed Monday.

The indictment represents the first time the United States has criminally charged top Syrian officials with a litany of human rights abuses used to silence dissent and spread fear through the country. The whereabouts of the officials, Jamil Hassan and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, are not known, but the indictment clearly signals that the United States aims to hold to account those who were at the highest echelons of the Syrian government.

Hassan, who was the head of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, and Mahmoud, a brigadier general in the air force's intelligence unit, "sought to terrify, intimidate and repress any opposition, or perceived opposition, to the regime," according to the indictment, which was filed under seal last month in federal court in Chicago.

The indictment was made public the day after Syrian rebels overthrew the government of President Bashar Assad of Syria. Hassan and Mahmoud would need to be flown to federal court in Chicago to stand trial, but the charges provide the legal mechanism for US law enforcement to take custody of the men, if they can be found.

Assad, an authoritarian leader known for his brutal tactics during a 13-year civil war, has fled to Russia, which, along with Iran, had helped keep him in power.

As top leaders under Assad, Hassan oversaw a crackdown on Syrian citizens in which a ruthless system of detention and torture flourished, and Mahmoud, as a brigadier general in the air force intelligence unit, was in charge of the prison at the military air base in the Mezzeh neighborhood of Damascus as well as operations at the base.

Along with unidentified co-conspirators, Hassan and Mahmoud "committed the war crime of knowingly and intentionally conspiring to commit cruel and inhuman treatment," according to the indictment. The men intended to inflict "serious physical abuse upon victims within their custody or control, namely US citizens and other detainees" held at the Mezzeh prison, where investigators said both men had offices.

The indictment describes the torture that Syrian military officials doled out from 2012-19. That included electrocution and pulling out the toenails of prisoners, as well as burning them with acid and regularly beating them.

The men were instrumental in helping Assad silence dissent, using torture -- and fear of it -- to maintain his government for more than a decade. His rule came to an end days ago, when rebels seized the country's largest city, Aleppo, and the capital, Damascus, and toppled Assad's government. The rebels freed prisoners in the country, many of them thought to be innocent civilians.

Both Hassan and Mahmoud are well known to human rights advocates and the US government. In 2012, the United States imposed sanctions on Assad and his inner circle, including Hassan, for committing acts of violence against civilians.

In mid-November, three days before a grand jury returned the indictment against the men, the State Department said that it had restricted Mahmoud's ability to travel "due to his involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

A spokesperson for the Chicago US attorney's office did not respond to a request for comment about why prosecutors waited more than 20 days to unseal the indictment.

Prosecutors in Chicago have been investigating Hassan and others since 2018, when the Justice Department opened a case related to the detention and killing of a US aid worker named Layla Shweikani. FBI agents traveled to Europe and the Middle East to interview witnesses, including the man who may have buried Shweikani.

The indictment does not name Shweikani, who was imprisoned on the outskirts of Damascus for nearly a year at three detention facilities known for their use of torture: a facility at the Mezzeh airport, the Adra civilian prison and the Sadnaya military prison.

Dina Kash, an FBI witness who was detained at Mezzeh prison, said in an interview that investigators wanted names of fellow detainees and information about how they were treated. Syrian guards beat her, knocking out her teeth. She was forced to listen to the screams of other prisoners being tortured. Guards killed her husband.

"The investigators focused on the people that interrogated me and the Assad regime, intelligence operatives and officials that were involved in my family's arrest, including Hassan," Kash said.

Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, said now was the time for the United States to hold responsible those officials who had subjected US citizens and countless others to detention and torture. "Now it is our time to catch these criminals and bring them to the United States for trial," said Moustafa, who added that he was traveling to Syria to help law enforcement agencies gather human remains and documents from the prisons.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a statement, vowed to hold the men to account. "Hassan and Mahmoud allegedly oversaw the systematic use of cruel and inhumane treatment on perceived enemies of the Syrian regime, including American citizens," he said.

The indictment does not mention Austin Tice, an American abducted in Syria in 2012. Syria never acknowledged holding Tice, but US officials are hopeful that he survived what would have amounted to a grueling stretch inside the prison system.

US officials are confident that Tice was held by the Syrians early in his abduction. Investigators learned that he had initially been taken to a prison in Damascus and was seen by a doctor, according to two people familiar with the matter. Tice managed to escape for about a week but was recaptured, the people said.

In May, U.S. officials informed the family of Majd Kamalmaz, a therapist from Texas, that he died in Syria after disappearing there in 2017. Like the case of Tice, Syria never acknowledged holding Kamalmaz, and there was little information about his whereabouts.

Moustafa said he and his research team strongly suspected that Kamalmaz was imprisoned, at least for some of his time in Syria, at the Mezzeh air base.