A part-time Lexington resident who once headed a notorious Syrian prison has been convicted by a federal jury of committing torture and immigration fraud.

The defendant, Samir Ousman Alsheikh, 73, is facing a maximum penalty of 100 years in prison. While waiting to be sentenced, he remains at a Los Angeles detention center where he has been held since July 2024.

Before immigrating to the U.S., according to federal authorities, Alsheikh was chief of Damascus Central Prison, better known as Adra Prison, from 2005 to 2008. This was during Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian regime, which collapsed in December 2024.

Investigators said Adra Prison held thousands of inmates, including political dissidents, and housed a wing where people were placed in tiny isolation cells and tortured.

During Alsheikh’s nine-day trial at a Los Angeles federal courthouse, which began March 2, prosecutors said multiple witnesses spoke about the “severe physical and mental pain and suffering” that Alsheikh ordered or participated in at the prison.

Victims said the torture strategies included putting inmates in a device called the magic carpet: two wooden panels with hinges in the middle that “folded” bodies at the waist, sometimes causing spinal fractures.

They also described prison guards suspending prisoners by their wrists from pipes, then beating them with fists or cables. One victim testified that he felt like his limbs would be torn from his body when the guards suspended him for days, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

Court documents indicate that Alsheikh entered the U.S. in March 2020 with an immigrant visa, or “green card,” obtained through his wife, a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 2023, he applied to also become a naturalized citizen and provided a South Carolina address as his most recent residence.

Alsheikh divided his time between Lexington and Los Angeles; he has relatives in both places, U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Ciaran McEvoy said in an email

Throughout the yearslong immigration process, prosecutors said, Alsheikh did not disclose his employment at Adra Prison, his persecution of people because of their political beliefs and his involvement in abusing inmates.

He was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport in July 2024, shortly before boarding a flight with a one-way ticket to the Middle East.

On March 16, the jury found Alsheikh guilty of all his charges: one count of conspiracy to commit torture, three counts of torture, one count of fraud in the possession and use of an immigration document and one count of attempted naturalization fraud.

“Our country is not a refuge for criminals – especially criminals who engage in the brutality of the kind this defendant inflicted on his victims,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement. “I commend the victims, our agents, and our prosecutors for finally bringing this defendant to justice.”

Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI investigated the case, with support from the HSI-led Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center and the justice department’s international affairs office.

Prosecutors also credited their international partners in Germany, Sweden, Canada and Belgium.