A former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where alleged human rights abuses took place has been charged with several counts of torture after being arrested in July for visa fraud charges, authorities said Thursday.

Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria’s infamous Adra Prison from 2005 to 2008 under recently ousted President Bashar Assad, was charged by a federal grand jury with several counts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture.

“It’s a huge step toward justice,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the U.S.-based Syrian Emergency Task Force. “Samir Ousman al-Sheikh’s trial will reiterate that the United States will not allow war criminals to come and live in the United States without accountability, even if their victims were not U.S. citizens.”

Federal officials detained the 72-year-old in July at Los Angeles International Airport on charges of immigration fraud, specifically that he denied on his U.S. visa and citizenship applications that he had ever persecuted anyone in Syria, according to a criminal complaint. He had purchased a one-way plane ticket to depart LAX on July 10, en route to Beirut, Lebanon.

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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.

The government fell to a sudden rebel offensive last Sunday, putting an end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family and sending the former president fleeing to Russia. Insurgents have freed tens of thousands of prisoners from facilities in multiple cities since then.

In his role as the head of Adra Prison, al-Sheikh allegedly ordered subordinates to inflict and was directly involved in inflicting severe physical and mental pain on prisoners.

He ordered prisoners to the "Punishment Wing,” where they were beaten while suspended from the ceiling with their arms extended and were subjected to a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist, sometimes resulting in fractured spines, according to federal officials.

“Our client vehemently denies these politically motivated and false accusations,” his lawyer, Nina Marino, said in an emailed statement.

Marino called the case a “misguided use” of government resources by the U.S. Justice Department for the “prosecution of a foreign national for alleged crimes that occurred in a foreign country against non-American citizens.”

U.S. authorities accused two Syrian officials of running a prison and torture center at the Mezzeh air force base in the capital of Damascus in an indictment unsealed Monday. Victims included Syrians, Americans and dual citizens, including 26-year-old American aid worker Layla Shweikani, according to prosecutors and the Syrian Emergency Task Force.

Federal prosecutors said they had issued arrest warrants for the two officials, who remain at large.

In May, a French court sentenced three high-ranking Syrian officials in absentia to life in prison for complicity in war crimes in a largely symbolic but landmark case against Assad’s regime and the first such case in Europe.

Al-Sheikh began his career working police command posts before transferring to Syria’s state security apparatus, which focused on countering political dissent, officials said. He later became head of Adra Prison and brigadier general in 2005. In 2011, he was appointed governor of Deir ez-Zour, a region northeast of the Syrian capital of Damascus, where there were violent crackdowns against protesters.

The indictment alleges that al-Sheikh immigrated to the U.S. in 2020 and applied for citizenship in 2023.

If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the conspiracy to commit torture charge and each of the three torture charges, plus a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each of the two immigration fraud charges.

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Syria's liberated political prisons reveal grim reality of Bashar Assad's regime of torture

Former Syrian President Bashar Assad's brutal regime of imprisonment and torture is on full display this week as victorious rebels dig through the dictator's now-liberated political prisons.

Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani vowed to dissolve the Assad regime's remnant security forces as well as close prisons that had been used to house political dissidents.

Thousands of Syrians stormed Assad's various prison facilities across the country as his regime fell in hopes of releasing their incarcerated friends and family members. Thousands were released alive, but others were found dead and still others remain missing.

U.S. prosecutors named two Syrian officials who they say ran a torture facility at Mezzeh air force base in the Syrian capital, Damascus. The U.S. alleges that their victims included political prisoners, peaceful protesters and a 26-year-old American woman who was later believed to have been executed.

The U.S. indictment names Jamil Hassan, director of the Syrian air force’s intelligence branch, who prosecutors say oversaw a prison and torture center at the Mezzeh air force base in the capital, Damascus, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, who prosecutors say ran the prison.

The most notorious of Assad's prison facilities was Saydnaya Prison, however, which lies just outside Damascus.

Syrian citizens have flocked to the prison in the days since Assad's fall on Sunday, breaking open cells and scouring what images reveal to be a labyrinthine prison. While dozens were freed on Sunday, virtually no one has been found since.

"Where is everyone? Where are everyone’s children? Where are they?" said Ghada Assad, breaking down in tears.

Syrians are continuing to search the facility, however, searching for hidden cells as well as documents that might shed light on their family members' fates.

"There is not a home, there is not a woman in Syria who didn’t lose a brother, a child or a husband," said Khairiya Ismail, 54, said of the prison and Assad's rule.

An estimated 150,000 people were detained or went missing in Syria since 2011. Tens of thousands of them are believed to have gone through Saydnaya, according to the Associated Press.

Amnesty International estimated that there were between 10,000 and 20,000 people being held in the prison as of 2017. The organization also claimed that there were routine mass executions.

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