Ten months after revealing his identity in an interview with the Al-Jazeera news channel on February 6, photographer “Caesar” has become a recognized and globally admired figure. Farid al-Madhan – his real name – a defector from the Syrian military police and a hero of the resistance to Bashar al-Assad’s regime, received the French-German Human Rights Prize on Wednesday, December 10, from French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot and Gunther Krichbaum, Germany’s minister for European affairs.

Exactly one year ago, the world applauded the fall of the “Butcher of Damascus,” who fled to Russia. Eleven years ago, Caesar – then a chief warrant officer – risked his life to take photographs documenting torture on an industrial scale in the prisons of the Syrian president. By doing so, he helped expose the mass crimes committed by Assad. From the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011 until his defection and escape in August 2013, al-Madhan collected nearly 55,000 photographs depicting thousands of prisoners who died from gunfire, torture, starvation or disease in the detention centers of the Syrian intelligence services. The victims, identified only by numbers, bore the marks of torture and mutilation.

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