"I'm going to tell you about the 11 months I spent in captivity. I was the youngest of the hostages, 22 years old. I have lost both my parents... The reason I take pictures is to remember people who are going to die. That's what interests me, memory, what remains." From his first words on Wednesday, February 19, before the Paris special criminal court, it was clear that the testimony of Edouard Elias, a war photographer captured and tortured in Syria by the Islamic State (IS) organization between June 2013 and April 2014, would be important.

His description, coming from inside the Syrian jails, of the deranged enterprise of dehumanization that IS had set up in its proto-state is a fascinating journalistic document. A modest, rigorous and sometimes funny testimony, patiently put together, day after day, despite the beatings, torture, permanent smell of death and deprivation of food; Elias never ceased being one, a journalist, during this journey to the end of hell.

On June 6, 2013, Elias had just crossed the Turkish-Syrian border to document Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons on his population, in the company of reporter Didier François, his "partner," when the two journalists were captured by five armed jihadists. The nightmare began immediately: The two men were tied to radiators, "beaten mercilessly" and deprived of food for four days.

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