Leila Fadel
Leila Fadel is a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering issues of culture, diversity, and race.
Most recently, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought us to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told us the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.
She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.
Before joining NPR, she covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.
Leila Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
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John Harris's family has buried Cockney East Enders in style for generations. But London has changed, so the funeral home now has washrooms for Hindus and will soon make room for Muslim rites as well. -
Public opinion against the European Union is fueled by the region's debt and refugee crises and trade negotiations with the U.S. A referendum is planned for 2017, and many Britons say they want out.
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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has pardoned some 100 political prisoners, including two journalists at Al-Jazeera's English-language network. For more, Renee Montagne talks with Leila Fadel.
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Grime and gaudy shop signs obscure much of downtown Cairo's ornate and varied architecture. The city is undergoing a major wash to uncover that beauty, but at the cost of some residents' livelihoods. -
A Egyptian businessman wants to buy an island from Greece or Italy to serve as home for 100,000 refugees. He plans to name it after the drowned Syrian boy, whose body washed ashore in Turkey.
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Three Al-Jazeera English journalists and several student activists were sentenced to up to three years and six months in prison in Cairo on Saturday.
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Three Al Jazeera English journalists, Mohamed Fahmy, Baher Mohamed and Peter Greste were sentenced to up to 3 years and 6 months in prison in a controversial case that's dragged on for nearly 2 years.
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Secretary of State John Kerry visits Egypt on Sunday as the two countries intensify ties, despite the concerns of human rights advocates.
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Egypt has intensified its military response against insurgents who've pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State. But some warn that the government's crackdown is creating more extremists. -
The soap opera features an Egyptian Muslim army officer in love with an Egyptian Jewish woman. It's airing daily during Ramadan and is proving both popular and controversial.
