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 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.
The Justice Department said that in addition to physical torture, the detainees at the prison were forced “to listen to the screams of tortured prisoners and share cells with the dead bodies of other detainees, while guards threatened to kill and sexually assault their family members. The detainees were also allegedly deprived of adequate food, water, and medical care.
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