Kevin Dawes is an American photojournalist who went into Syria in 2012 to document the conflict unfolding there. However he was captured by the Assad regime and held in their secret detention centers for 3.5 years in which he was brutally tortured. He was captured from October 3, 2012 to April 1, 2016. 

Dawes earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and later his Master’s degree in the same from Cornell University in 2008.

He then chose to start a second career as a freelance battlefield photojournalist.  He  was involved in documenting the first Libyan civil war and also in providing medical relief and other support to the free Libyans who now reside there.

After the first Libyan civil war, Dawes decided to travel to Syria, as he intended to set up medical relief and document the atrocities unfolding. On October 3, 2012 he was kidnapped by the Assad regime shortly after crossing the border from Turkey into Syria and was held in their prison system until April 1st, 2016.

According to Dawes, 

During this time I was continuously interrogated and brutally tortured. In addition to the terrible and inhuman things done to me I witnessed awful things being done to others. Children being tortured. People dying of their treatment. The systematic extermination of dissent.

While I was being held in Syria I was brutally tortured, I was accused of being a CIA agent. They beat my feet, they chained me to the wall in stress positions for days at a time… Once, even so long that I lost the ability to speak for 6 entire weeks. Whenever I did try to speak during this time, words came out in a jumbled shiver. I was dry drowned, hung on bars with my feet, with only the toes touching the ground such that I couldn’t draw a breath unless I was standing on my tiptoes, a position that no one could hold for very long and once you aren’t able to, you lose the ability to draw a breath. I was also brutally disfigured. A large piece of my right foot is now missing and replaced by a skin graft. They removed it with a piece of electrical conduit during a beating. The infection that was caused by the beating, the foot swoll terribly and the skin died and grew necrotic. It smelled terrible in my cell and threatened my life. 

These are only a few of the things I was subjected to – there are many others: I was deprived of blankets and kept in a freezing cold cell, I was drenched with water continuously for days.., and of course, the endless beatings. However, I cannot honestly say that I was the worst treated prisoner there. The things that I saw being done to others in many cases were far worse. I saw prisoners being raped in the hallway. I even saw children being tortured. 

I still have trouble believing some of the things that I saw and yet they will burn bright in my memory forever. It is my hope that by sharing my eyewitness testimony of the things that transpired in this prison, the crimes committed against not just me but the citizens of Syria, that I may affect some positive change and relieve their misery.

I do not see what happened to me as my story but rather as the story of Syria and myself as a means of telling this story. I hope that my experience has empowered me to fight the great evils that I witnessed there by way of the testimony that I intend to give.