Syria: Former head of US torture prison indicted

In the United States, the former head of a notorious Syrian prison was indicted on torture allegations on Thursday, according to the US Department of Justice. The 72-year-old, who has already been imprisoned on other charges, is accused of personally torturing opponents of the recently overthrown government of ruler Bashar al-Assad, the Justice Ministry said. The 72-year-old is said to have headed the central prison in Damascus, known colloquially as Adra Prison, from around 2005 to 2008.

He has lived in the USA since 2020 and was arrested in Los Angeles in July 2024 on further allegations against him.

The Islamist group Hajat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allied militias took the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday after their major offensive that began on November 27th and toppled the ruler Assad, who had been in power for decades. Assad fled abroad.

The Assad family had ruled the country with an iron hand for more than 50 years. Assad took power in the country in 2000 from his late father Hafez al-Assad and with it an apparatus of prisons and detention centers in which dissidents were locked up.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 100,000 people have died in Syrian prisons, often as a result of torture. Assad’s violent suppression of pro-democracy protests in 2011 began a civil war that killed half a million people and forced millions to flee.