The Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press has named Ali Al-Ibrahim, co-director of OCCRP member center Siraj, and Syrian investigative journalist Mais Katt as joint winners in its investigative reporting category. The award recognizes their September 2025 cross-border investigative project, “Syria’s Stolen Children: How the Assad Regime Turned Detainees’ Children into Hostages Between Intelligence Agencies and Orphanages.”
Published a year ago following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, the investigation documents how officials from al-Assad’s security services abducted hundreds of Syrian children of political detainees and hid them inside children’s charities in order to coerce and intimidate their families. The investigation exposed the complicity of several care institutions, including facilities run by the major European charity SOS Children’s Villages, whose leadership knew about the abuses for years and remained silent.
The Samir Kassir Award, which has been presented by the E.U. since 2006, selected the investigation from 194 submissions across 11 countries in North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf.
