Hunters to Hunted: The Search Begins for Syrian Torturers and War Criminals

A man shows two ropes tied in the shape of nooses, found in the infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 9, 2024. Hussein Malla/AP

Twenty years ago the hunt was still active for key members of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, who had been ousted by the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Now, following the capture of Damascus by the Syrian rebels, it’s the turn of those who played key roles in the regime led for 24 years by Bashar al-Assad, and his father, Hafez, before him.

In April 2003, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency created a pack of cards to denote the major villains in Iraq.

Saddam—who was captured in Dec. 2003 and later hanged—was the king of spades, and his sons Uday and Qusay were the ace of hearts and clubs respectively.

Only four of the 52 in the pack remain at large, as of Dec. 2024.

One of them—head of Saddam’s secret police Rafi Abd-al-Latif Tilfah Al-Tikriti—remains under sanction by numerous Western governments.

So who would be in Syria’s pack of cards?

Assad, who was president since 2000, was the man who ultimately decided to brutally put down uprisings against his rule from 2011 onwards, and it will be for prosecutors to find documents or testimony to prove he authorized widespread torture and execution of his political opponents.

Assad, 59, flew out of Syria on Dec. 7 and has been offered sanctuary in Moscow, along with his wife Asma and their children.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to hand him over to the Syrians, or any international war crimes tribunal.

So what about Assad’s underlings?

On Dec. 9 the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against two former senior Syrian Air Force intelligence officers, Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65.

The pair, who remain at large, have been charged with a conspiracy to commit war crimes by a federal grand jury in Illinois.

According to the indictment, Hassan oversaw a network of detention facilities, including Mezzeh prison in Damascus, where political opponents were tortured, and Mahmoud directed operations at Mezzeh.

On Dec. 12 the U.S. Department of Justice announced a federal grand jury in Los Angeles had charged Samir Ousman Alsheikh, 72, with three counts of torture and several other offenses.

Alsheikh was allegedly in charge of the Damascus Central Prison, at Adra, from 2005 to 2008.

The indictment claims he lied about his crimes to obtain a green card, which granted permanent residency in the United States.

Alsheikh, who allegedly held positions in the Syrian police, was appointed governor of the province of Deir Ez-Zour by Assad in 2011, but flew to the United States in 2020 and applied for citizenship in 2023.

In May 2024, Le Monde reported a court in Paris had found three senior officials, including Ali Mamlouk, the former head of Syria’s National Security Bureau, guilty of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Times of Israel reported last week Mamlouk had fled to Lebanon.

Another wanted fugitive is Kifah Moulhem, the former head of military intelligence; as is Kamal Hassan, the former head of the so-called Palestine Branch, a prison that operated in Damascus between 2017 and 2020.

Another marked man is Amjad Youssef, a Syrian intelligence officer who allegedly implicated himself in the so-called Tadamon massacre in 2013, to journalists from New Lines magazine.

A leaked video, which surfaced in 2022, appeared to show Youssef shooting 41 men, who were dumped in a mass grave in the Tadamon suburb of Damascus.

In March 2023 the British Foreign Office named a series of Assad regime officials who were sanctioned in connection with their alleged involvement in the production of the highly addictive drug Captagon.

The list included Mustafa Al Masalmeh, a militia leader in southern Syria who was “involved in assassinating opponents of the Syrian regime.”

Also named on the list were Waseem Badia al-Asad, and Samer Kamal al-Asad, both described as “relatives” of Assad.

The head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the terrorist group that led the lightning offensive that toppled the Assad regime, has called for those who committed crimes against the Syrian people to be punished.

On Dec. 10, HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, said in a message on the Telegram app: “We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security, and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people.”

Syrian President Bashar Assad, center, waves to his supporters upon arrival to take the oath of office for a fourth seven-year term, at the Syrian Presidential Palace in the capital Damascus, Syria, on July 17, 2021. Syrian Presidency via Facebook via AP

Every generation since 1900 has seen ghastly dictatorships fall or revelations about horrific genocides.

Between 1915 and 1917, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed or deliberately starved to death by the Ottoman Empire in a genocide, which even today the Turkish government denies.

Two of the three main perpetrators were hunted down and killed by Armenian assassins—Talaat Pasha in Berlin in 1921, Djemal Pasha in Tbilisi in 1922—while the third, Enver Pasha, was killed by Soviet troops, also in 1922.

At least six million Jews, Gypsies, and political opponents of the Nazis were slaughtered between 1933 and 1945, many of them in the gas chambers of concentration camps in Germany and occupied Poland.

After the war, many leading Nazis were put on trial at Nuremberg and several were executed. Hermann Göring cheated the hangman by committing suicide on the eve of his execution.

Adolf Eichmann, an SS officer and key organizer of the Holocaust, was traced to Argentina by Vienna-based sleuth Simon Wiesenthal. Eichmann was kidnapped by Mossad agents, brought back to Israel, convicted, and executed in 1962.

Josef Mengele, an SS doctor who carried out horrendous medical experiments on those in the camps, died in obscurity in Brazil in 1979.

Some theories suggested Hitler’s former assistant, Martin Bormann, who was indicted in absentia at Nuremberg, was still alive.

But the Jewish Virtual Library, which is run by nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, says Bormann’s remains were found in 1972 near the Lehrter railway station in West Berlin and were genetically matched in 1998.

After the Rwanda genocide in 1994—in which up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed—a list of the leading architects of the atrocities was drawn up.

In 2020 one of the biggest perpetrators, Felicien Kabuga, 84, was arrested in France after 26 years on the run.

Kabuga, a wealthy Hutu businessman, had funded the Interahamwe militias and purchased thousands of machetes for the killers.

Last year, a United Nations war crimes tribunal court indefinitely stayed Kabuga’s trial on health grounds.