By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. indictment unsealed on Monday charged two former high-ranking Syrian officials under ousted President Bashar al-Assad with war crimes, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.
The indictment, which was unsealed in the Northern District of Illinois, charged the former Syrian intelligence officials with engaging in a conspiracy to commit cruel and inhuman treatment of civilian detainees, including U.S. citizens, during the course of the Syrian civil war.
Prosecutors identified the defendants as former Syrian Air Force intelligence officers Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65.
Warrants for the defendants’ arrest have been issued, and they remain at large, the Justice Department added. The defendants could not immediately be reached.
They engaged “in a conspiracy to commit war crimes through the infliction of cruel and inhuman treatment on detainees under their control, including U.S. citizens, in detention facilities at the Mezzeh Military Airport (Mezzeh Prison), near Damascus,” the Justice Department added.
From 2012 to 2019, the officials were alleged to have “whipped, kicked, electrocuted and burned their victims; hung them by their wrists for prolonged periods of time; threatened them with rape and death; and falsely told them that their family members had been killed,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
After a lightning advance, Syrian rebels brought an end to more than 50 years of rule by the Assad family over the weekend.
A 13-year-old civil war killed hundreds of thousands, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble, countryside depopulated and the Syrian economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler and Cynthia Osterman)
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