Mohammed Bassiki

Mohammed Bassiki was selected for the 2026 Shortlist with Scrap Wars: How child labour and conflict feed Turkey steel boom.

An investigative journalist, founder and Executive Director of the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ, the first investigative journalism unit in Syria. It aims to promote a culture of in-depth reporting and investigations in newsrooms, as well as provide training and capacity-building for Syrian journalists.

Bassiki has been a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington, D.C., United States, since May 2023. He also serves as a board member of the INC Communications Committee at ICIJ, and holds a diploma from the Swedish Institute / Leaders Lab (2023).

His stories focus on public spending, financial investigations, tracking money, budgets, and public and private companies, as well as human rights violations and migration.

Through SIRAJ, he collaborates with numerous international media organizations, including OCCRP, El País, Lighthouse Reports, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Finance Uncovered, Al Jazeera English, and others.

Bassiki’s investigations have been nominated for several international awards, including the “Shining Light Award” by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) in 2025, the “True Story Award” in Bern, Switzerland (2024), the ARIJ Award (2024) in the Middle East, the “Hostwriter Prize” in Germany (2023), and the “Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism” (2022), in addition to several awards from the International Center for Journalists.