ST. PAUL, Minn. – For 2025, the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) will present its annual Eclipse Award to the Caesar Files Team, the group of Syrian activists who helped smuggle more than 50,000 photographs depicting torture inside Syria’s prisons to the outside world. Their work exposed in forensic detail the extreme abuses of the Assad regime, providing critical evidence and ultimately helping thousands of Syrian families learn the truth about missing loved ones.

The Caesar Files Team is a collective that includes a Syrian photographer who made international headlines as “Caesar,” a pseudonym he and the team chose for confidentiality as they published the horrifying photos exposing the torture inflicted by the Assad regime. When that dictatorship fell in December 2024, the team was finally able to shake the deadly threat they’d lived under for years and begin to share more openly about their painstaking work. Over a decade, they analyzed and cataloged the photos, documenting details for use in legal cases and for families seeking news of the missing.

“I cannot overstate the intense personal risk taken by this team during those years of clandestine work,” said Dr. Simon Adams, CVT president and CEO. “The Caesar Files Team risked their lives exposing atrocities and forever changed the way the world understood the industrial system of disappearance, torture and death in Assad’s Syria. They are heroes in Syria and to human rights defenders everywhere.”

“Lives were changed when this team began to bring their evidence to light,” said Noura Aljizawi, prominent figure in the Syrian uprising, CVT board member and researcher at the University of Toronto. “As a Syrian, I know the feelings of families who spent years in silence and fear, not knowing what had happened to their loved ones. The work of the Caesar Files Team gave people answers—often devastating ones—but answers nonetheless. And with truth, even painful truth, come the first steps toward justice. Their courage gave others strength and inspiration to continue speaking out and fighting for accountability.”

CVT is proud to recognize the work of the entire Caesar Files Team, with members including Ussama “Sami” Uthman, executive director; Ayman Chamo, board chair; board members Mashaal Hamoud and Mohammad Hasan; as well as staff members Issa, Khawla and Ammar.

At CVT’s annual Courageous Voices event on June 26, the award will be accepted by these team members:

Ayman Chamo is an agricultural engineer and human rights activist who founded and supported several Syrian initiatives and organizations, starting with local councils after 2011, and the Caesar Files for Justice.

Mashaal Hamoud is a human rights expert and humanitarian leader, serving as a co-founder of the Caesar Files Team and currently holds the position of executive director at Frontliners for Change (FFC).

Ussama Uthman is a civil engineer and founder of the Caesar Files Team, who worked for a decade under the codename “Sami,” strengthening efforts in documentation and accountability.

“Now that the Assad regime has fallen and the last detainees have left its dungeons, the world owes a debt to the Caesar Files Team for shining a light on the darkest injustice,” said Simon Adams. “It is an honor to be able to present this award and applaud their contribution to the struggle against torture.”

Each year for June 26, the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, CVT presents the Eclipse Award to an organization or individual who has advanced efforts to end torture, bring accountability to perpetrators or provide rehabilitative care to survivors. As part of global events held each year, CVT’s Eclipse Award honors the dedicated efforts of partners, survivors and organizations to end torture and heal its wounds.

-###-

The Center for Victims of Torture is a nonprofit organization with offices in Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Uganda, United States and additional project sites around the world. Visit www.cvt.org