A US federal court has sentenced former Syrian official Samir Othman Al-Sheikh to 60 years in prison on charges of prisoner torture and lying to US immigration authorities.
Al-Sheikh served as the head of Damascus’s Adra prison from approximately 2005 to 2008. In March 2026, a US court found him guilty on six counts, including conspiracy to torture, three counts of torture, visa fraud, and fraud in obtaining citizenship. According to prosecutors, prisoners were subjected to severe torture in a section of the prison known as Wing 13, and Al-Sheikh ordered some of the torture and was personally involved in certain incidents.
He arrived in the US in 2020 and, according to authorities, attempted to obtain a green card and later US citizenship by concealing information about his past activities. He was arrested in July 2024.
According to the US Department of Justice, he is the highest-ranking former official of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime to be tried and convicted outside of Syria while present in the country. This sentence was handed down by the federal court in Los Angeles on September 17, 2026.
