The US has charged two high-ranking officials of the fallen Assad regime with war crimes for allegedly torturing Syrian and American citizens, as rebels vow to hold the ousted leaders accountable.
A newly unsealed indictment in the Northern District of Illinois names former Syrian Air Force intelligence officers Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65, as the main perpetrators who oversaw brutal human rights abuses at the Mezzeh Military Airport near Damascus.
“The perpetrators of the Assad regime’s atrocities against American citizens and other civilians during the Syrian civil war must answer for their heinous crimes,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
From 2012 to 2019, Hassan and Mahmoud oversaw the operations at the prison in Mezzeh where their lackeys “whipped, kicked, electrocuted and burned their victims,” according to the indictment.
The prison staff were also accused of routinely removing the detainees’ toenails and subjecting them to acid.
Detainees were allegedly hung by their wrists “for prolonged periods of time,” as well as threatened with rape and death, according to the DOJ.
Mezzeh officials also allegedly lied to detainees by telling them that their family members had been killed during the brutal civil war happening outside the jail, Garland added.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the torture was carried out on anyone suspected of aiding or supporting groups opposed to Assad’s regime during the Syrian civil war.
Prosecutors said Hassan and Mahmoud remain at large, but the indictment did not specify where the two men are located or if US intelligence even knows where they are.
During the fall of the regime, which occurred in the span of just 12 days under the rebel’s lighting offensive, Assad and his family fled to Russia, with the whereabouts of his senior leadership unknown.
Germany had previously issued an arrest warrant for Hassan and Mahmoud in 2018 on similar charges.
The American indictment comes as Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani vowed to hold officials of the Assad regime accountable for war crimes committed against their own people.
“We will pursue war criminals and seek their extradition from the countries they have fled to, so they may receive their just punishment,” al-Jolani said in a statement released by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Al-Jolani said the group would soon issue a list of wanted officials, adding that the rebels would offer amnesty to those who were conscripted in the military and forced to fight for Assad.
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