For over a decade, the world only knew him as “Caesar.” His photographs, harrowing and haunting, were smuggled out of Syria at great risk. They offer a rare, unfiltered glimpse into the systematic torture and mass killing inside former President Bashar al-Assad’s prisons. Caesar remained a faceless witness to some of Assad’s darkest atrocities, but the dictator’s collapse in December 2024 allowed him to step into the light. In a televised interview with Al Jazeera in February he revealed himself. His hands tapped nervously as he spoke, releasing the weight of 12 years of civil war, he said: “I am First Lieutenant Farid al-Madhhan, the (former) head of the forensic evidence department at the military police in Damascus, known as Caesar.” He fled Syria in 2013, taking with him about 55,000 graphic pictures he’d photographed between 2011 and 2013.
With support from Mouaz Moustafa and his nongovernmental organization, the Syrian Emergency Task Force, Madhhan told Scott Pelley for a report that aired in 2021: “I did all of this. I risked my life and the lives of my family in order to show and expose to the entire world the true face of this dictatorship of the Assad regime.”
Former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Stephen J. Rapp called Madhhan’s images the strongest case against a dictator he’d ever seen. “We’ve got better evidence against Assad than we had against Milosevic. Maybe even the Nazis. They didn’t take individual photos of their victims. Assad’s people did,” Rapp said. Madhhan shared with us never-before-seen images he smuggled out of Syria—skeletal bodies, evidence of starvation, bruises from beatings and methodical cruelty. They weren’t just photos. They were proof. They were the truth.
Though Assad’s crimes were condemned, nothing stopped him. We titled our piece “Handcuffed to the Truth” to illustrate this cruel paradox. For a decade, Madhhan’s photos helped families search for their loved ones and served as evidence that could shackle Assad’s regime to their crimes. Then, in December 2024, the Syrian people bore witness to the unthinkable. Assad’s empire crumbled as rebel groups reclaimed the country. Soldiers fled in fear, and Assad himself escaped to Russia.
When we visited Damascus days after the regime’s fall, feelings of peace and hope were palpable. Justice felt possible for the first time since we began reporting on the crisis. Legal authorities in Europe have initiated proceedings against former government officials, and Madhhan’s catalog of evidence and 2014 Congressional testimony will be paramount to any case. While we were inside a free Syria, crowds took to the streets in both jubilation and grief. The conflicting emotions reflected the aftermath of Assad’s brutal rule—over half a million lives lost, millions displaced, and a country in ruins. Syria’s next chapter is yet to be written. Like Madhhan, we will shine a light on the toll of Syria’s civil war, so the truth no longer hides in the shadows.
