The US has charged two high-ranking officials of the fallen Assad regime with war crimes for allegedly torturing Syrian and American citizens, as rebels vow to hold the ousted leaders accountable.
A newly unsealed indictment in the Northern District of Illinois names former Syrian Air Force intelligence officers Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65, as the main perpetrators who oversaw brutal human rights abuses at the Mezzeh Military Airport near Damascus.
“The perpetrators of the Assad regime’s atrocities against American citizens and other civilians during the Syrian civil war must answer for their heinous crimes,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
From 2012 to 2019, Hassan and Mahmoud oversaw the operations at the prison in Mezzeh where their lackeys “whipped, kicked, electrocuted and burned their victims,” according to the indictment.
The…
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