detained him at Los Angeles International Airport<\/a> in July 2024.<\/p>\nIn a three-hour hearing, the judge heard statements of support from Alsheikh\u2019s son and daughter. Rami Alsheikh, his son, said the family cannot reconcile his kindness and compassion with the accusations he faced at trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did not, and still do not, make sense to us, given the man we know and love,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Before the sentencing, Alsheikh himself also addressed the court in a rambling statement in which he said he tried to fight corruption and clean up Adra Prison. Alsheikh said through an interpreter that he was not an Assad loyalist and that he \u201conly served as an employee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alsheikh is the highest-ranking former member of the Assad government to be tried and convicted in person outside of Syria, the U.S. Department of Justice said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCriminals who inflict the type of savage brutality that this defendant did on his victims must never be granted refuge in our country,\u201d First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Thursday. \u201cWe hope today\u2019s sentence gives some semblance of healing and closure to this defendant\u2019s victims.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a sentencing memo filed this month, DOJ prosecutors said Alsheikh participated in the torture of his victims because he had the power to do so and because he thought he would never be held accountable.<\/p>\n
The memo included statements from several victims, one of whom, Nidal Shikhani, said he can \u201cstill hear the screams of others begging for mercy, repeating, \u2018Leave me, leave me.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors had asked for a minimum sentence of 80 years. Alsheikh’s attorneys, Nina Marino and Collin Cate, called for a five-year sentence, noting that he is 74 years old and has \u201csignificant medical and cognitive conditions.\u201d They also said he was willing to be deported to Syria, where a new government has sought to hold Assad-era security officials accountable.<\/p>\n
Jurors also convicted Alsheikh in March of lying to U.S. immigration authorities and fraudulently obtaining a green card and attempting to naturalize as a U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n
Alsheikh was arrested with help from the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based opposition organization. One of its staff members, a former Syrian detainee, was first tipped off in 2022 by a refugee that Alsheikh was in the United States. The organization alerted several federal agencies and began working with them to build a case against him.<\/p>\n
“We are committed to a peaceful and democratic Syria, and that cannot happen without justice and accountability for the remnants of Assad\u2019s regime,” Mouaz Moustafa, the task force’s executive director, said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Assad was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024, bringing a 14-year civil war to an end. But the country has continued to suffer from sporadic outbreaks of violence.<\/p>\n
In March 2025, armed groups aligned with Assad ambushed the new government\u2019s security forces on Syria\u2019s coast. A government counteroffensive then spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks and the massacre of hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, three people were sentenced in the Syrian city of Aleppo in connection with the violence. Two members of the pro-Assad groups were sentenced to death and life in prison, while a member of the security forces who took part in the revenge attacks was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Thanawala reported from Atlanta.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES — A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during the rule of former President Bashar Assad was sentenced Thursday to 60 years in a U.S. prison after a federal judge recounted the \u201cunimaginably cruel” details of his abuse. A jury in March found Samir Ousman Alsheikh guilty on all six counts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1newslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}