-Analysis-
DAMASCUS — For years, “Caesar” seemed like a legend or a symbol who transcended reality for Syrians. But at his core, he was a hero of flesh and blood, a hero who resembled them and belonged to their world. He was not a supernatural figure or an anonymous character from heroic tales; he was an ordinary employee, someone you could encounter daily on your street or in your office. Yet he possessed extraordinary courage that changed the course of Syrian history.
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This individual, identified only by the name “Caesar,” leaked photos providing evidence of the torture and killing of civilians by President Bashar al-Assad’s government, which were used in the 2014 Syrian detainee report, also known as the Caesar Report. Published on Jan. 21, 2014, the report resulted in sanctions, including the U.S. Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 (or Caesar Act), that severely affected the Syrian economy.
Since the fall of the Assad regime, the question of “Who is Caesar?” can now be answered. He is Chief Warrant Officer Farid Nada al-Madhhan, from the town of Sheikh Miskin in Daraa, who worked in Damascus. Before the revolution, he was responsible for photographing traffic accidents, but after the uprising, the regime reassigned him to photograph the corpses of detainees.
Farid came from a town similar to those of many Syrians. This was evident when a friend called me, saying: “I actually know him! He’s from our town.”
Who is Caesar?
Farid grew up amid familiar hardships, but he chose to bear the responsibility of uncovering the truth. With this decision, Caesar proved that heroism is not exclusive to great figures or supernatural forces — it is a personal choice made by an ordinary individual at a decisive moment. Heroes, in the end, are our family members, our neighbors, our friends—those who have the courage to stand against injustice.
When the photos leaked by “Caesar” were published, they became one of the most horrific archives of modern dictatorship. Although the world was already aware of the Assad regime’s brutality, these images served as irrefutable visual evidence of the crimes committed against detainees. The leaks were a historical shock, documenting, for the first time, systematic torture and mass death in Syrian prison cells.
The images sparked widespread international reaction, covered by over 1,000 media outlets worldwide, igniting heated debates in legal and political circles.
After their publication, normalizing relations with Assad was no longer just a controversial political option — it became a moral dilemma for governments considering reestablishing ties with his regime. These images effectively created an invisible barrier between the Syrian regime and the international community, making any attempt to rehabilitate it akin to justifying the unjustifiable.
Simple tools
Although the title “Caesar” was used by Roman emperors after Julius Caesar — who was a prominent military and political leader — and has since been associated with power and authority, in the Syrian case, it became a symbol of courage and justice rather than rule. Farid, unintentionally and through his human instinct and ambition for justice, transformed a name linked to leadership and strength into one carrying deep ethical and humanitarian value.
We never had a picture of Caesar. Perhaps we imagined him as a character from detective films, armed with high-tech gadgets, driving luxury cars and communicating through encrypted channels beyond surveillance. But Caesar needed none of that.
Farid used two ordinary objects to conceal the evidence.
His tools were remarkably simple. Caesar was not a hero with advanced weapons but with a human conscience that made him a witness to a crime that could have remained without evidence. Farid used two ordinary objects to conceal the evidence: socks and a loaf of bread — items that hold deep significance in Syrian daily life.
Bread, which Syrians waited for hours to obtain at checkpoints and bakeries, became, in this story, a means of salvation — not from hunger this time, but from erasing the truth. Meanwhile, socks, often sold cheaply by street vendors on buses and sidewalks, unexpectedly became a vessel for safeguarding one of Syria’s most critical archives.
The connection between hiding this archive and objects representing Syrians’ poverty and daily struggles is no mere coincidence. It is a painful reflection of the circumstances under which these crimes were documented. Under tyranny, even survival is dictated by poverty — as if, even in their resistance, Syrians must rely on the burdens they carry daily to fight against death and oblivion.
Only the beginning
Farid’s role extended beyond smuggling the images. He also tried to help families of the disappeared and detained, attempting to stop their financial exploitation by regime officers who extorted them with false promises about their loved ones’ fates.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, he said with deep sorrow: “I couldn’t hold myself together — they’re killing our children, oppressing and humiliating us and then they come back to take bribes and money from us just to show us our children’s corpses!”
Smuggling the images was only the beginning. Farid faced a daily struggle, looking through them one by one. The bruised and burned faces told their stories in silence. “When I looked at the photos, I felt like they were speaking to me,” he said, unable to even recognize his own relatives among the victims, as torture had erased their familiar features.
Assad starved Syrians — not Caesar
Some accuse Caesar of being responsible for starving Syrians and worsening their economic crisis. There is no doubt that unilateral sanctions have always been an unfair weapon that harms civilians more than regimes.
Yet before the U.S. Caesar Act was even enacted, Syria’s economy was already collapsing due to corruption, mismanagement and the regime’s prioritization of war over economic stability. The country’s production sectors were in ruins and prices were soaring. The regime itself used starvation as a weapon in besieged areas, such as in Ghouta.
If starvation today is being used to condemn Caesar, why wasn’t Assad condemned when he systematically starved detainees and civilians? How does a law passed after over 120,000 people had disappeared become the only ethical issue? This selective outrage reveals a double standard — whether due to ignorance of the facts or deliberate complicity.
Today, we can say that Caesar has given us everything he had.
At the same time, the Caesar Act undeniably weakened the Syrian regime from within, turning it into a fragile entity incapable of maintaining its former strength. Sanctions have historically hurt regimes that rely on military and repressive funding for survival.
But this is not about glorifying U.S. sanctions — it is about affirming that justice cannot be selective. When the whistleblower is condemned while the real perpetrator is excused and when one tragedy is justified while another is denounced, we face a profound moral failure that cannot be ignored.
Today, we can say that Caesar has given us everything he had. He lost his right to a normal life, forced to live under strict security measures for his safety. As he revealed in his Al Jazeera interview, he was denied integration into French society, the chance to learn the language and the ability to work — living in secrecy as a tribute to the tortured and the disappeared, to the faces that appeared in his leaked photos, whom no one could recognize because the regime left neither features on their faces nor flesh on their bones.
