"Caesar" - which was called upon by the law approved by the US Congress and which began implementing Wednesday and imposes sanctions on the Syrian regime - a title given to a former Syrian military who defected from the system and leaked tens of thousands of photos of torture victims from Syrian civilians, which the International Commission of Inquiry charged with examining war crimes relied on In Syria to prove the occurrence of atrocities by the Syrian regime.

Birth and upbringing
No one is familiar with the details of Caesar's life and upbringing because of the security precautions he takes to preserve his life.

Jobs and responsibilities
“Caesar” worked as a conscript in the Syrian army charged with taking pictures in the places where civil crimes took place, and since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in March 2011 he was charged with photographing the bodies of civilians victims of torture and killing by the Syrian regime, and he worked as a military photographer in the Syrian army for a period 13 years until he defected in 2013.

He is the source of 55,000 pictures of detainees and dead people in the detention centers of the Bashar al-Assad regime, and he was the one who sent the pictures to his relatives outside Syria, and "Caesar" and his family were smuggled out of Syria, fearing for their lives.

Leaking pictures
since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, the Syrian regime has not stopped bombing cities and villages with rockets and heavy artillery, leaving hundreds of thousands of victims dead and wounded, while millions have been forced to flee and seek refuge, in what the opposition describes as systematic killings and displacements amounting to war crimes.

If the bombing with missiles, artillery, chemical gases, barrel bombs, and other methods of killing known to the Syrians, the prisons filled with citizens were out of sight, and hardly anyone knows what is going on inside them except for what is being promoted in tongues.

But "Caesar" was another word, as he worked on leaking tens of thousands of pictures of the victims of torture carried out by the security branches of the Syrian regime, which expose what is going on inside prisons and shed light on what was described as one of the greatest atrocities witnessed in mankind in its history.

The protests of Daraa The
beginning was shortly after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, where "Caesar" says that the killings were launched during the peaceful protests of Daraa, as the security services transferred to them about 45 of the bodies of peaceful protesters to the military hospital known as "601", and it was said that they are the bodies of "infiltrators" From Daraa, after which the number began to increase dramatically, keeping refrigerators with the dead in record time, which prompted officials to dump the bodies in various places, including parking lots.

Three or four days later, the pathologist comes to see the corpses left in the open exposed to rodents and insects, and after the number exceeds 200 or 300 corpses they are collected and taken to unknown places.

Beating and breaking,
according to "Caesar", it is not collected only the bodies that the pathologist orders to collect after reviewing their data, while the intelligence collects the rest of the bodies.

The bodies of the dead showed signs of torture, with electricians, severe beatings, broken bones, and various diseases, including scabies, along with gangrene and strangulation.

Among the dead were children between 12 and 14 years old, and elderly people, some of them over 70 years old.

"Caesar" said that some opinions go in the direction that the bodies that are being transported are buried in mass graves, while unconfirmed rumors indicated that many bodies are being burned in a special oven.

And the number of smuggled pictures reached 55 thousand, at a rate of four specifically for each body.

Confirmation of my rights
Human Rights Watch confirmed the authenticity of the photos submitted by "Caesar" related to the death of 6,786 people inside the Syrian detention camps, and documented the victims through the pictures of "Caesar", and reached the authorities responsible for torturing and killing them.

“Caesar” explained that the Syrian regime’s bodies took pictures of the victims ’bodies with the aim of issuing a death certificate without the need for legal justification for the family, then making sure that the officers carried out the death warrants issued to them, and that no detainees in the various security branches were released.

According to “Caesar,” every body carries a number that identifies the security branch that arrested its owner, and the second number is placed on the body inside the military hospital as a kind of fraud on families who may believe that its owner died in the military hospital.

Displaying pictures
and the story of his escape from Syria, reports indicate that "Caesar" feared for his personal safety and that of his family after he sent thousands of pictures to one of his legal acquaintances outside Syria, so he decided - with the support of the Syrian opposition - to leave the country with his family.

Later, we called for "Caesar" in the US Congress, where he presented the photos to the Foreign Relations Committee, while an international investigation team was formed to discuss war crimes committed in Syria, and the team has confirmed the authenticity of the photos.

Caesar addressed his speech to Congress, saying, "I have come to send you a message: Please stop the killing in Syria."

"There are massacres being committed, and the country is being ruthlessly destroyed. There are ten thousand victims who will not return to life. They had dreams, ambitions, families and friends, but they died in Assad's prisons. The Syrians are asking you to do something like you did in the former Yugoslavia."


The massacres stopped and American lawmakers presented the bill in 2016 with the aim of "stopping the mass killing of the Syrian people, encouraging a peaceful settlement through negotiation, and holding the Syrian human rights violators accountable for their crimes."

After discussions, Congress passed the bill in December 2019, and the president signed it as part of the Defense Budget Act 2020.

The measure aims, according to the Congressional statement, to stop the massacre of the Syrian people.

During a press interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he denied the authenticity of these pictures. He said, "You can present any image from anywhere and claim it to people who were tortured. There is no evidence or evidence for these pictures, all of which are accusations without evidence."

However, Human Rights Watch confirmed that it met with 33 family members of 27 Syrian victims and verified the authenticity of the photos of their relatives, in addition to the testimonies of former detainees and defectors from the Syrian regime.