Best feature photography on an international theme published in any medium
Award Year: 2024
Award Name: The Danish Siddiqui Award 2024
Recipient: Moises Saman
Affiliation: The New Yorker
Honored Work: “The Fall of the Assad Regime”
As Syrians flocked to the notorious Sednaya and Palestinian Branch prisons to search for disappeared loved ones after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime, Saman accompanied relatives hunting for traces of survivors. He captured their anguish while they followed a grim trail of evidence at morgues, mass graves and funerals. The work is a stark but unflinching record of more than a decade of violence largely hidden from the public eye, and an important historic record of this wrenching chapter of Syrian history.
Sednaya, north of Damascus, is one of the most notorious detention facilities in the world. During the war, the regime held countless activists, political prisoners, and civilians at Sednaya, where they were subjected to starvation, torture, and extrajudicial killings. Photo by Moises Saman
Families with missing relatives search Syria’s deadly Sednaya Prison, emptied after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime. Photo by Moises Saman
Guided by the smell of dead bodies, a man searches between the walls in Sednaya prison, on the outskirts of Damascus. Photo by Moises Saman
In an office at the Palestine Branch complex, desks are scattered with papers left behind by fleeing security officers. The documents, many marked with official seals and coded notations, contain clues to the regime’s atrocities. Some detail arrest orders and interrogation transcripts, and others bear the names of prisoners or records of surveillance operations. Photo by Moises Saman
At the morgue of Al-Mujtahid Hospital in Damascus, the body of an inmate from Sednaya Prison lies on gurney. The man was executed and his eyes gouged out. Photo by Moises Saman
An empty mass grave, dug by Assad’s forces on the outskirts of Damascus, is flanked by others that were evidently already used to bury the regime’s victims. Photo by Moises Saman
In a basement beneath the Mezzeh airbase, in Damascus, the regime held opponents in cramped, windowless cells. The facility was notorious for its brutal treatment of prisoners. Among those imprisoned and tortured there was the noted activist Mazen al-Hamada. Photo by Moises Saman
Motasem Kattan, a detainee at Syria’s Palestine Branch prison, reenacts his ordeal as his father looks on. Photo by Moises Saman
At a funeral ceremony for the activist Mazen al-Hamada, hundreds of relatives and sympathizers gathered to mourn and to project solidarity. His sister-in-law, Majida Kaddo (center), was unable to see him for years, before his remains were discovered near Damascus. Photo by Moises Saman
Prisoner photos found at Palestine Branch prison, probably taken during intake or interrogations. For many, these may be the only remaining trace of their existence. Photo by Moises Saman
Dozens of bodies recovered from a mass grave on the outskirts of Daraa are stored in a morgue in the town of Izra. Photo by Moises Saman
Smudged thumbprints cover a wall in the Palestine Branch, left by detainees going through registration or identification procedures. Photo by Moises Saman
Citation for Excellence:
Lynsey Addario
The New York Times
“Sonya”