LOS ANGELES (CN) - A former Syrian prisoner testified to being strapped to the "magic carpet" in an underground cell complex and tortured by the former head of the Adra Prison near Damascus at the trial of his accused tormentor in Los Angeles.
Khaled Abdul Malek, who had traveled from Germany to testify at the trial of Samir Ousman Alsheikh, finished his testimony Wednesday morning by telling the jury that he was joyful because Alsheikh was being tried "according to justice."
"I came to here to speak the truth on my behalf and on behalf of the prisoners who can't come here," Malek said, adding those included the prisoners who died.
The former prisoner recounted on Tuesday afternoon the torture he endured when he had refused Alsheikh's request to poison a prominent political prisoner who was held in the prison's hospital wing.
He was taking to Wing 13, an underground complex that was used as the punishment wing were prisoners were kept in tiny, dark cells without a bed until the guards took them to a central room to be interrogated and tortured.
Malek testified that on his second day in Wing 13, guards took him blindfolded to the central room where he was strapped to the so-called magic, or flying, carpet, a device that folds the victim's body in two, causing excruciating and lasting injuries to their back.
When he was tied on his back to the device, Alsheikh - who Malek often referred to by his title "the brigadier-general" - lifted his blindfold and called him a bastard and said he was conspiring with Mamun al-Homsi, the imprisoned Syrian parliamentarian Malek had been told to poison.
Alsheikh then used his foot to fold Malek's lower body over his upper body at angle of between 45 to 90 degrees, causing him to scream out in pain until he passed out, Malek said.
He was carried back to his cell in a blanket because he wasn't able to walk, Malek testified.
That wasn't the end of his torture, he said. During the next weeks and months he was held at Wing 13, he had his wrists handcuffed to an overhead water pipe for days at a time with his arms extended above his head and his toes barely touching ground.
"My brain became disconnect from the world," Malek told the jurors, describing how he wasn't able to sleep in that position for days and forced to urinate on himself.
Malek, who walks slowly supported by a cane, testified he suffers from chronic injuries to his back, neck and wrists, as well as mental ailments, because of the torture he endured in Adra Prison.
Alsheikh, 72, was in charge of Damascus Central Prison, known as Adra Prison, from about 2005 through 2008. Prosecutors with the U.S. Justice Department accuse him of ordering prison guards to torture political and other prisoners as well as of participating personally in the mistreatment of prisoners.
Alsheikh is charged with conspiring with other Syrian officials to torture prisoners at Adra Prison as well as three counts of ordering the torture of three individual prisoners, including Malek, who will testify at the trial.
In addition, Alsheikh is charged with immigration fraud and attempted naturalization fraud for lying on his U.S. visa and citizenship applications about his involvement in the torture of dissidents.
Nina Marino, one of Alsheikh's attorneys, told the jury in her opening statement Tuesday that prisoners weren't tortured in Adra Prison, which she said was a civilian prison, as opposed to the military and intelligence prisons in Syria where the widely reported human rights abuses in Syria occurred.
Reinoud Leenders, an associate professor of International Politics and Middle East Studies at King's College London, testified Tuesday afternoon that torture was systemic and common in all Syrian prisons under the regime of Bashar al-Assad, whether they were military or political prison.
The magic carpet was one of the commonly used methods of torture in Syrian prisons, he said.
Leenders told the jury that after Bashar al-Assad had succeeded his father Hafez al-Assad - who had ruled the country with an iron fist for 30 years - in 2000, there was a short-lived Damascus Spring as many Syrians were optimistic that the West-educated new president would reform the country and allow more political freedom.
However, when politicians, lawyers, academics and activists started to publicly call for political reform, the regime quickly cracked down and many who had spoken out for change were arrested on trumped up charges and sent to prison.
At the same time, the younger Assad still sought to improve relations with Western democracies to obtain technology and trade, Leenders testified, and the regime wanted to keep up the impression that it respected the rule of law and due process when it came to these new political prisoners.
"Assad still banked on being seen as a reformer who had a greater respect for human rights than his father," Leenders said.
It was in this context that in 2005, Alsheikh, who had risen to the rank of brigadier-general in Syria's Political Security agency, was appointed as director of Adra Prison, the country's largest civil prison where numerous political prisoners were held.
Assad, according to Leenders, wanted a trustworthy and experienced loyalist in charge of the prison to juggle the need for incarcerating dissidents while keeping up the appearance that they were adhering to due process procedures.
Assad also showed his trust in Alsheikh a few years later when he made him governor of the oil-rich province of Deir Ez-Zour when Syria got caught up in the Arab Spring in 2011 and mass demonstrations against the regime swept through the country.
The Syrian's regime brutal response to the demonstrations let to years of civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed, including tens of thousands prisoners, and millions of people fled the country.
It wasn't until December of 2024 that Assad fled the country that he and his father had ruled for 50 years.
Source: Courthouse News Service
