Shortly after the war in Syria started in 2011, Syrian-born Majd Kamalmaz, a U.S. citizen living in Texas, founded a clinic in Lebanon to treat Syrian refugees pro bono, according to the complaint filed at the U.S. District Court of Columbia in Washington, D.C. on Monday.
In February 2017, he traveled to Damascus to visit family and see if he could establish a clinic there to support victims of the trauma caused by the 13-year-long conflict.
The complaint alleges that during his visit, Majd was stopped at a Syrian military checkpoint in Mezzeh, a suburb of Damascus, abducted by soldiers, and imprisoned. The family was never told why he was arrested or jailed.
Majd’s 39-year-old daughter, Maryam Kamalmaz, told OCCRP that her father called her mother the night before he disappeared and said that he had arrived safely at a family member's house in Damascus. “We did not hear from him after that phone call,” she said.
The family believes that he was moved between various detention facilities, including the Mezzeh Military Airport prison, known for its harsh treatment of prisoners.
“We were told by different connections in Damascus that he was in Mezzeh. I was absolutely frightened but yet I thought his American citizenship would protect him, and since he never committed a crime, they would surely realize they made a mistake detaining him and would release him soon,” Kamalmaz said.
Her father remained incarcerated in Syria for years, while the family tried everything possible to get any information about him and secure his release.
However, in May 2024, the Kamalmazs were informed by U.S. officials that Majd had died in prison.
Now, six of his close family members are bringing civil action against Syria and its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Faisal al-Mekdad.
“This case is incredibly significant,” Moaz Moustafa, founder of the Syrian Emergency Task force, a U.S.-based human rights charity who follows such cases, told OCCRP. “The family is taking this as only its first step on the road towards justice. We are now doing all we can… to ensure that the Department of Justice acts in a criminal investigation, and a criminal case is brought against the Assad regime for the murder of Majd Kamalmaz.”
The plaintiffs are seeking a total of US$70 million in damages. The civil case is being brought under the terrorism exception to the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). “This exception voids Syria’s immunity to suit in cases where harm to U.S. citizens was caused by acts of terror. That is exactly the case here” Cody F. Marden, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, told OCCRP.
It’s not the first time someone has sued Syria for similar allegations and won.
In October 2023, Miller & Chevalier, the U.S. law firm representing the Kamalmazs, won a court case in favor of its client, Kevin Dawes, a U.S. citizen detained and tortured by the Assad regime. The judge ruled that Dawes was entitled to nearly US$50 million in damages.
Even if Syria is found guilty, it won’t pay a dime.
“These judgments are compensated by the U.S. Victims of State Sponsors of Terrorism (USVSST) Fund, which is set up and administered by the U.S. government,” Marden explained.
The U.S.Congress created this fund in 2015 to provide compensation to a specific group of international terrorism victims harmed by state-sponsored terrorism.
Marden said that this would be the only way to obtain justice and vindication.
“My hope is to achieve accountability and justice,” Maryam Kamalmaz said. “My father was an innocent man who never was charged with a crime nor was he ever on any trial. This is not a lawsuit only for my father but a lawsuit for the hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children who have suffered at the Syrian government's hands.”
Detainees have died in Syrian prisons “both by execution and torture” according to a 2023 U.S. government report, which points out the “numerous detention facilities where regime officials reportedly tortured prisoners, including the Mezzeh Airport detention facility.”
In 1979, the U.S. State Department designated Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, and in more recent years, the U.S. placed several members of the Syrian government under sanctions.
U.S. citizens are advised against traveling to Syria as they can be targets of “abduction and/or wrongful detention by the Syrian government. The detainees do not have access to fair judicial process or medical attention. Government detention centers are known to be unsanitary facilities where widespread cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment of detainees has been documented, as well as torture and extrajudicial killings,” according to the State Department.
The U.S. government cited the Netherlands-based charity The Syrian Network for Human Rights as saying that “at least 112,713 individuals, including 3,105 children and 6,698 women, remained forcibly disappeared by conflict parties from March 2011 through August 2023.”