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 U.S. 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.
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