Watch the two-part documentary Finding Yusuf
The Dateline and World News teams were the two SBS winners at the 69th Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism in Sydney, with annual awards in 30 categories.
Colin Cosier, Agnes Teek and the Dateline team received the Walkley Prize in the All Media: International Journalism category, for
Yusuf Zahab was a Sydney schoolboy who was taken to Syria at the age of 12 under the self-proclaimed Islamic State group (IS). He has become the symbol of a generation of boys set adrift in the prisons of northeastern Syria.
In 2014, the IS group joined the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that began in 2011 and captured large parts of the country.
Yusuf Zahab as a boy. Source: Delivered
It attracted tens of thousands of foreign fighters, including more than 200 from Australia.
As US-backed Kurdish forces captured the last territory held by the IS group in Syria, 15-year-old Yusuf was separated from his mother and held without charge in a men's prison along with former IS group fighters.
Yusuf has been imprisoned since then, while his mother, Aminah, remains in Syria's al-Roj detention camp.
Yusuf says he was imprisoned in appalling conditions for the first 18 months as an unaccompanied minor, together with adult men believed to be fighters from the IS group.
Then in January 2022, at the age of 17, he was injured in the head and arm during an escape attempt by IS fighters who attacked his prison in the city of al-Hasakah.
The Syrian Democratic Forces said more than 500 people were killed in the 10-day battle for the prison.
It was Yusufduring or just after the attack.
It was only untilin Syria that his survival could be confirmed. The team was the first Australian he had connected with since 2019.
The Walkley judges praised Dateline's reporting.
“Colin Cozier and the Dateline team provide a stunning example of public service journalism across international borders with this investigation into Australian families held in Syria,” they wrote.
“Cozier exposes the government's inaction and incompetence, discovers a young man previously thought dead and informs his overjoyed mother in this deeply moving and compelling television documentary.”
October 7 reporting
Also on Tuesday evening, SBS's chief international correspondent Ben Lewis won the Walkley Prize for television/video news reporting for the October 7 attacks.
with Cozier for their compelling coverage of Ukraine: One Year On, including theto help defend the country.
Lewis' reporting on the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel's subsequent bombardment of Gaza included an extraordinary interview with an Australian man, Anthony,
Anthony, along with his Israeli-Australian wife and the three of them children under the age of four lived in kibbutz Be-eri, a farming community in southern Israel, near the border with the Gaza Strip – and one where 110 bodies were found after Hamas
Lewis toowhere at least 260 people were killed by Hamas militants in a surprise attack.
While SBS visited the site, an Israeli Army (IDF) soldier fired warning shots at a Palestinian man suspected of carrying a weapon – highlighting the volatility of the situation days after the massacre.
The Walkley judges called Lewis's reporting from Israel “an excellent example of TV news reporting.”
“He obtained exclusive material, worked under pressure in dangerous areas and maintained an even-handed outlook and calm tone to make honest statements,” they said.
“His moving interview with an Australian survivor of the kibbutz attacks and his reporting from the rave site were standout moments.”
DEKYAS NEWS World Breaking News and Trusted Source
