On March 16, Samir Ousman Alsheikh, a 73-year-old Syrian national and former chief of the country’s notorious Damascus Central Prison (aka: “Adra Prison”), was convicted in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (C.D. Cal.) for one count of conspiracy to commit torture, three counts of torture, and two immigration-related counts in a case that involved a raft of false statements to U.S. officials. This case is a clear reminder of why DHS and the State Department ask so many seemingly absurd questions on immigration applications, and a warning to immigrants about the costs of lying to the U.S. government.
Historical Background
Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the territory that is now Syria fell under a French mandate and remained under French control until it was granted independence in 1946.
A brief period of unsteady democracy followed, which ended with the first of several military coups in March 1949, ushering in decades of instability until the military wing of the totalitarian socialist Ba’ath Party seized control of the country in November 1970 under the leadership of Gen. Hafez al-Assad.
The general-turned-president’s rule in Syria was marked by brutality, and when he died in June 2000, he was replaced by his son, Bashar.
Curiously, Bashar al-Assad wasn’t raised to be a Levantine strongman: The UK medical journal The Lancet aptly describes him as “an ophthalmologist who graduated from Damascus University (Syria) and specialised at the Western Eye Hospital in London” before his “sudden career shift to politics”.
The journal continues: “Despite his medical training, which undoubtedly included ethics education, his actions while at the helm of a 24-year presidency reflected a complete abandonment of any medical ethics he once learned.” That’s an understatement.
The human rights situation didn’t improve in Syria after the erstwhile ophthalmologist took over. The abuses described in the State Department’s 2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are too long to list in full, but they include the following:
Local human rights organizations continued to cite numerous cases of security forces allegedly abusing and torturing prisoners and detainees and claimed that many instances of abuse went unreported.
...
Former prisoners, detainees, and reputable local human rights groups reported that methods of torture and abuse included electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; burning genitalia; forcing objects into the rectum; beating, sometimes while the victim was suspended from the ceiling; alternately dousing victims with freezing water and beating them in extremely cold rooms; hyperextending the spine; bending the detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts; using a backward-bending chair to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the victim's spine; and stripping prisoners naked for public view.
Few in the West were sorry to see Bashar al-Assad go when he fled Syria for Russia in early December 2024 as rebel factions closed in around Damascus.
U.S. v. Samir Ousman Alsheikh
That State Department report on Syria was highlighted because according the December 12, 2024, first superseding indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with the C.D. Cal. in Alsheikh’s case, the State Department issued it around the time he left his position at Adra Prison.
The timing of the indictment itself is notable because as the Center for Justice & Accountability explains, it came “just four days after the fall of the Assad regime” and “added four torture-related charges against Alsheikh”.
That suggests the “fall of the Assad regime” may have led to the discovery of new information about Alsheikh, but regardless Bashar features prominently in the document, and a photo on p. 4 shows the defendant receiving his commission as governor of Syria’s Deir Ez-Zour province from the then-president in July 2011.
There are no allegations in the indictment relating to Alsheikh’s gubernatorial activities, but many regarding his prior role as head of Adra Prison, a position he held “from in or about 2005 and continuing through in or about 2008”.
Adra, the government argued, “held thousands of prisoners, including both political dissidents and prisoners accused or convicted of various other crimes” during the time Alsheikh ran the prison.
Most detainees were held above-ground in rooms they shared with others, but the prison also included a “punishment wing” known as “Wing 13”.
Wing 13 had a below-ground section containing “small isolation cells and a room in which prisoners were interrogated and tortured”, where DOJ contended Alsheikh ordered prisoners “to be interrogated and tortured”.
According to the indictment, prisoners in Wing 13 were packed 10 and more together in tiny “isolation cells” (some with their hands tied behind their backs) that were “infested with lice and other vermin” and “very cold in the winter” — a particular abuse because prisoners there “were allowed to wear only minimal or no clothing, and had freezing water poured on them”.
The indictment charged Alsheikh with conspiring with others in the facility “to inflict severe physical and mental pain and suffering to punish political dissidents, and other prisoners who were perceived as sympathizing with the political dissidents”, as well as “to deter opposition to the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad”.
Prisoners were tortured by being suspended by their wrists “for hours at a time” (including “outward in a crucifixion-like position”) while being beaten with fists, batons, and cables; placed on a rack-like device that stretched their arms and legs; shocked with electric prods; burned with metal rods; and denied medical treatment.
The most gruesome torture, however, involved a “a wooden device with hinges in the middle”, referred to as the “flying carpet”. As the indictment explains:
After the prisoner was secured to the device, prison guards folded the bottom half of the device on top of the upper half, forcing the prisoner’s body to fold in half at the waist into a position in which the prisoner’s feet were level with his head. ... When the lower half of the device was folded on top of the upper half, defendant ALSHEIKH, and others known and unknown, sometimes kicked the elevated half of the device, putting additional pressure on the lower half of the prisoner’s body and causing additional pain and further injury.
The indictment also charged Alsheikh and others with ordering prisoners to harm detained dissidents, and when they refused, torturing them using the flying carpet and other forms of abuse, and with torturing (on the flying carpet) and threatening with execution a prisoner who had sent a letter of support to a detained opponent of the regime.
Counts Five and Six
Counts Five and Six in the indictment alleged immigration-related criminal activity, including in the United States.
Alsheikh was charged in Count Five under 18 U.S.C. § 1546(a) (“Fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents”) with obtaining and using a green card he had procured by means of “false claims and statements”.
Specifically, the indictment alleged he made three “false statements” on his DS-260 U.S. immigrant visa application, when he denied that: he had “committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in torture”; he’d engaged in “extrajudicial killings, political killings, or other acts of violence”; and that he was or had been a “member of or affiliated with the Communist or other totalitarian party”.
Count Six charged Alsheikh under 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a) with attempting to procure citizenship “contrary to law” by failing to disclose: the positions he held under the Assad regime and his association with the Ba’ath Party; that he had engaged in persecution, torture, killing, and hurting others “on purpose”; that he had served in a police unit and worked at a jail and detention facility; and that he had given false information to a U.S. immigration official or lied to obtain immigration benefits or admission.
Why Immigration Authorities Ask Seemingly Absurd Questions
If you review certain questions on blank immigration applications, they appear absurd: Does the federal government really expect applicants to answer truthfully when asked if they are terrorists, seek to overthrow the U.S. government through violence, or have engaged in torture and other human rights abuses?
But this case underscores why DHS and the State Department ask them: If you lie about any of those activities, you expose yourself to federal prosecution and 10 years’ imprisonment.
Alsheikh was convicted on all six counts and likely doesn’t think his responses are any laughing matter now. He faces 20 years in a federal penitentiary on each of the torture-related counts, in addition to a decade each on the two immigration charges. It’s not clear when he will be sentenced.
Nothing suggests USCIS approved Alsheikh’s naturalization request, but this conviction should send chills down the spines of immigrants who obtained citizenship by fraud or failing to admit to unlawful activity, in this country or abroad.
“Denaturalization” is a hot topic given recent terror attacks and major fraud schemes perpetrated by former immigrants who obtained U.S. citizenship, but losing a passport may be the least of their worries; the federal pen is no place any of us wants to be, and a former Syrian prison boss is about to find out what the view’s like from the inside looking out.