Former Syrian official convicted of torture sentenced to 60 years in US prison
A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during the rule of former President Bashar Assad was sentenced Thursday to 60 years in a U.S. prison after a federal judge recounted the "unimaginably cruel" details of his abuse.
A jury in March found Samir Ousman Alsheikh guilty on all six counts including torture and conspiracy to commit torture for his actions while in charge of Syria's infamous Adra Prison from roughly 2005 to 2008.
"The conduct was heinous, unimaginably cruel, and almost unspeakably violent and brutal," U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera said before announcing the sentence. The judge said a hearing to determine financial restitution would be scheduled in the coming months.
Alsheikh, dressed in a khaki prison uniform and shackled at the ankles, was expressionless after he learned his fate. He waved to members of his family in the gallery before officers handcuffed him and led him from the courtroom.
Defense attorneys said they will appeal the sentence.
He oversaw torture at the prison, prosecutors said
Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.
Prosecutors said Alsheikh, seeking to quash political dissent, sent certain prisoners to a notorious wing of Adra where they were held in small isolation cells and brutalized. During the trial, three victims recounted beatings while suspended from pipes on the ceiling and the use of a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist. One person testified that Alsheikh stomped on the device with his foot.
Alsheikh came to the U.S. in 2020 and applied for citizenship, but prosecutors say he concealed his involvement in torture. Federal authorities detained him at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2024.
In a three-hour hearing, the judge heard statements of support from Alsheikh's son and daughter. Rami Alsheikh, his son, said the family cannot reconcile his kindness and compassion with the accusations he faced at trial.
"They did not, and still do not, make sense to us, given the man we know and love," he said.
Alsheikh said he was an 'employee'
Before the sentencing, Alsheikh himself also addressed the court in a rambling statement in which he said he tried to fight corruption and clean up Adra Prison. Alsheikh said through an interpreter that he was not an Assad loyalist and that he "only served as an employee."
Alsheikh is the highest-ranking former member of the Assad government to be tried and convicted in person outside of Syria, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
"Criminals who inflict the type of savage brutality that this defendant did on his victims must never be granted refuge in our country," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Thursday. "We hope today's sentence gives some semblance of healing and closure to this defendant's victims."
In a sentencing memo filed this month, DOJ prosecutors said Alsheikh participated in the torture of his victims because he had the power to do so and because he thought he would never be held accountable.
The memo included statements from several victims, one of whom, Nidal Shikhani, said he can "still hear the screams of others begging for mercy, repeating, 'Leave me, leave me.' "
Prosecutors had asked for a minimum sentence of 80 years. Alsheikh's attorneys, Nina Marino and Collin Cate, called for a five-year sentence, noting that he is 74 years old and has "significant medical and cognitive conditions." They also said he was willing to be deported to Syria, where a new government has sought to hold Assad-era security officials accountable.
Jurors also convicted Alsheikh in March of lying to U.S. immigration authorities and fraudulently obtaining a green card and attempting to naturalize as a U.S. citizen.
Opposition group helped locate him in US
Alsheikh was arrested with help from the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based opposition organization. One of its staff members, a former Syrian detainee, was first tipped off in 2022 by a refugee that Alsheikh was in the United States. The organization alerted several federal agencies and began working with them to build a case against him.
"We are committed to a peaceful and democratic Syria, and that cannot happen without justice and accountability for the remnants of Assad's regime," Mouaz Moustafa, the task force's executive director, said Thursday.
Assad was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024, bringing a 14-year civil war to an end. But the country has continued to suffer from sporadic outbreaks of violence.
In March 2025, armed groups aligned with Assad ambushed the new government's security forces on Syria's coast. A government counteroffensive then spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks and the massacre of hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs.
On Thursday, three people were sentenced in the Syrian city of Aleppo in connection with the violence. Two members of the pro-Assad groups were sentenced to death and life in prison, while a member of the security forces who took part in the revenge attacks was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Source: Associated Press
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