An exclusive Al Jazeera interview with the Syrian military defector codenamed “Caesar”. Between 2011 and 2013, he smuggled about 53,000 photos out of the Syrian government’s secret archives, nearly half of which were of dead and tortured civilian detainees. He made them public in 2014 and they were presented to the United Nations in the “Caesar Report”. Human Rights Watch verified them as genuine and declared that the Syrian regime should be tried for crimes against humanity. Caesar escaped from Syria and – heavily disguised to protect his safety – spoke publicly about the photographs in Europe and the US. The al-Assad regime fell on December 8, 2024. After years in hiding, Caesar now reveals his identity in an exclusive interview with Fairouz Ziani – and is able to close a dark, 12-year chapter of his life, finally step out of the shadows and renew calls for justice for those responsible for this systematic inhumanity.