The family members of Syrian-American Majd Kamalmaz have filed a civil lawsuit against the Syrian government, seeking damages of at least $70 million for the unlawful detention, torture, and killing of Kamalmaz. The lawsuit, filed by law firm Miller & Chevalier in collaboration with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, was submitted to the US District Court in Washington, DC under the state sponsor of terrorism exception of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. This exception allows individuals to sue foreign governments designated by the US as state sponsors of terrorism for compensatory damages.
Majd Kamalmaz, a psychotherapist and humanitarian worker, was arrested by Syrian regime forces on February 15, 2017, in Damascus. The family was informed by US officials in May that he had died in prison. The US government report on Syrian human rights practices noted several detention facilities where regime officials reportedly tortured prisoners, including the Mezzeh Airport detention facility where Kamalmaz was believed to have been held.
This lawsuit follows a previous case in January where Miller & Chevalier secured nearly $50 million in damages from the Syrian government on behalf of Kevin Dawes, a US national who was imprisoned and tortured by the regime for almost four years.
According to the 2023 US government report, several human rights groups have identified numerous cases of enforced disappearances by or on behalf of regime authorities. The Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented at least 157,464 disappearances between March 2011 and July 2024, with the Assad regime responsible for over 85 percent of these cases.