MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A landmark case in a Los Angeles federal court ended with a guilty verdict. The defendant was a Syrian officer from the former regime of President Bashar al-Assad. He was charged with torture from the time he led Syria's largest civil prison, along with lying on his visa and citizenship application when he came to LA to join his family. Reporter Deborah Amos has more.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: Guilty on all counts, the jury's verdict on the first day of deliberations. In this two-week trial, the defendant Samir Alsheikh, now in his early 70s, listened intently to Syrian witnesses describe events when he oversaw Adra Prison from 2005 to 2008. One witness recalled Alsheikh ordered his torture when he refused his demand to kill a political prisoner of the Assad regime.
He said he was sent to the prison's punishment wing, where inmates were beaten while suspended from the ceiling and tied to a device called the magic carpet, which folded bodies in half at the waist, causing excruciating pain. The trial was monitored by law students from Loyola University. They posted updates on Instagram, part of the school's Justice for Atrocities Clinic led by law professor Rajika Shah.
RAJIKA SHAH: We had gotten close to 10,000 views on our videos for each post. People are really following what's happening with this trial quite closely.
AMOS: It's a landmark case, she says, because of the defendant's high rank and because of the use of the federal torture statute.
SHAH: It's the very first prosecution of a former senior Syrian government official in the United States under this statute that allows the United States to prosecute acts of torture that occurred abroad.
AMOS: The statute comes from a U.N. treaty on torture signed by the U.S. that became legally binding in 1994. It's only the fourth case of its kind. Beth Van Schaack, former U.S. ambassador for global criminal justice at the State Department, says jurisdiction was triggered when Al Shake showed up in Los Angeles.
BETH VAN SCHAACK: So it doesn't matter how they got here, under what circumstances, whether it was lawful or unlawful. If they're found here, jurisdiction exists. And that's exactly what happened here.
AMOS: He landed in LA in 2022 and may have calculated no one would recognize an elderly Syrian man joining his family. He didn't count on a dedicated network of Syrian activists who got an anonymous tip of his whereabouts a year after he arrived. Mouaz Moustafa is the head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, based in Washington, D.C.
MOUAZ MOUSTAFA: We were, first of all, shocked that someone with such a high profile may have come into the United States. And we quickly kind of went on to verify that.
AMOS: Moustafa says the FBI began an investigation. The next hurdle was identifying victims.
MOUSTAFA: How do we find witnesses from 20 years ago?
AMOS: A former prisoners network was the key. Alsheikh was arrested at the LA airport in 2024 - he'd booked a one-way ticket earlier that day back to the Middle East - arrested by U.S. federal authorities as he headed to his departure gate. While European courts have prosecuted low-level former Syrian officials, this is a guilty verdict for a man who was close to President Assad and his family and had privilege and power, says Moustafa.
MOUSTAFA: This is incredibly important for Syria. It is a country that has been through some of the worst crimes of the 21st century over the last 14 years of war.
AMOS: Important for the victims, too, says Dan McLaughlin, legal director for the Center of Accountability and Justice that represented the witnesses, and adds, it's also important for the U.S.
DAN MCLAUGHLIN: At a time when the rule of law is being undermined in many respects, this trial is an example that our U.S. legal system can be used to prosecute those who commit atrocity crimes.
AMOS: It was a long road to accountability for atrocity crimes committed in Syria decades ago.
For NPR News, this is Deborah Amos.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
