The family members of Syrian-American Majd Kamalmaz filed a civil lawsuit against the Syrian government on Monday, seeking damages of at least $70 million for the unlawful detention, torture and killing of Kamalmaz.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Kamalmaz family 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. The 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 first arrested by Syrian regime forces on February 15, 2017 in Damascus, Syria. Kamalmaz’s family was informed by US officials in May that he died in prison.

This is not the first time such a lawsuit has been filed. In January, 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 Syrian government for almost four years.

A 2023 US government report on Syrian human rights practices noted that several human rights groups “identified numerous detention facilities where regime officials reportedly tortured prisoners, including the Mezzeh Airport detention facility” where Kamalmaz was believed to have been held. Furthermore, the report cited various enforced disappearances by or on behalf of regime authorities.

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, at least 157,464 disappearances were documented between March 2011 and July 2024, with the Assad regime responsible for over 85 percent of these cases.