Syria sued in US court on torture claims

A US citizen who says he was tortured in Syrian custody has filed a lawsuit against President Bashar al-Assad's government in Washington, seeking accountability at a time that Damascus is reconciling in the region.

Obada Mzaik, who was born in Ohio and also holds Syrian citizenship, said he was hoping to see family when he was detained on arrival at the Damascus airport in January 2012, nearly a year into the brutal civil war.

In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Washington, Mzaik said he was taken to a basement cell that held around 10 other people, including a 13-year-old boy who said he had been tortured for more than 80 days.

Mzaik, who had been a student in Syria when protests broke out against Assad, was "brutally and systematically beaten, whipped and threatened with electrocution," the lawsuit said.

"He was held in inhumane detention conditions and forced to witness other detainees being tortured, including one of his relatives," it said.

Mzaik alleged that interrogators from the Air Force Intelligence Directorate "inflicted severe physical and mental pain" as they sought information on his friends, contacts and interactions with the US government and to "punish him for perceived anti-regime activities."

He was released within a month after his family paid bribes through an intermediary, the lawsuit said. He was then treated by doctors for more than a month before he headed to Jordan and then the United States, it said.

Mzaik is seeking unspecified payment as damages from the Syrian government under a US law that says that foreign governments designated as state sponsors of terrorism are exempt from immunity.

The lawsuit was filed in January but unsealed this week. The court documents showed that the Czech embassy in Damascus, which represents US interests in the country, formally informed the government of the lawsuit.

While it remains highly unlikely that Assad would pay any damages awarded in a court case, the United States has previously seized and allocated Iranian funds as damages, drawing legal challenges from Tehran's clerical state.

The lawsuit comes as Arab nations meet in Saudi Arabia on reconciling with Assad, widely seen as having won the civil war.

The United States has insisted that it will never normalise ties or fund reconstruction through Assad without accountability for abuses in the war that has killed half a million people and displaced half of the country's pre-war population.