Watch the two-part documentary Finding Yusuf on
Dateline and World News teams were the two SBS winners at the 69th Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism in Sydney, with the annual awards spanning 30 categories.
Colin Cosier, Agnes Teek and the Dateline team were awarded the Walkley award in the All Media: International Journalism category, for the
Yusuf Zahab was a Sydney schoolboy who was taken to live in Syria under the self-proclaimed Islamic State group (IS) when he was 12. He has become emblematic of a generation of boys, adrift in the prisons of northeast Syria,
In 2014, the IS group joined the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that had started in 2011 and captured large areas of territory in the country.
Yusuf Zahab as a boy. Source: Supplied
It attracted tens of thousands of foreign fighters, including more than 200 from Australia.
As the US-backed Kurdish forces captured the last of the IS-group-held territory in Syria, 15-year-old Yusuf was separated from his mother and detained without charge in a men's prison alongside former IS group fighters.
Yusuf has been imprisoned ever since, while his mother, Aminah, remains in Syria's al-Roj detention camp.
Yusuf says for the first 18 months he was imprisoned as an unaccompanied minor in squalid conditions alongside adult men who were suspected IS group fighters.
Then in January 2022, aged 17, he was injured in the head and arm during an attempted breakout by IS group fighters attacking his prison in the city of al-Hasakah.
The Syrian Democratic Forces said over 500 people were killed in the 10-day battle for the prison.
Yusuf was
either in or just after the attack.
It wasn’t until
in Syria that his survival could be confirmed. The team were the first Australians he had made contact with since 2019.
The Walkley judges praised Dateline's reporting.
"Colin Cosier and the Dateline team deliver a stunning example of public service journalism conducted across international borders with this investigation into Australian families detained in Syria," they wrote.
"Exposing a government inaction and incompetence, Cosier discovers a young man previously thought dead and informs his overjoyed mother in this deeply moving and riveting television documentary".
October 7 reporting
Also on Tuesday night, SBS' chief international correspondent Ben Lewis won the Walkley award for Best News Reporting for the October 7 attacks.
Lewis won the award in 2023 with Cosier for their compelling coverage of Ukraine: One Year On which included the
to help defend the country.
Lewis' coverage of Hamas' October 7 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 their three children aged under four lived in Kibbutz Be-eri, a farming community in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip border — and one where 110 bodies were found after Hamas
Lewis also
, where at least 260 people were killed by Hamas militants in a surprise attack.
While SBS was visiting the site, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier fired warning shots near a Palestinian man who was suspected of carrying a weapon — highlighting the volatility of the situation days after the massacre.
The Walkley judges said Lewis' reporting from Israel was "an excellent example of TV news reporting".
"He obtained exclusive material, worked under pressure in dangerous areas, and kept a balanced view and calm tone to deliver honest accounts", they said.
"His moving interview with an Australian survivor of the kibbutz assaults, and his reporting from the rave site, were standout moments."
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