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.
-
President Trump declined to condemn white supremacy in his debate with Joe Biden. He also appeared to speak directly to the Proud Boys, an organization known for engaging in political violence.
-
A professor at the University of Southern California finds himself at the center of controversy after using a Mandarin word in class that some students said sounded like N-word.
-
Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, is calling for a six-week lockdown to save lives and the economy. -
Protesters Call For Police To Be Defunded. But What Does That Mean?Protesters nationwide are demanding police reform. Calls to defund the police mean different things to different people, and there's no clear answer to what that might look like in reality.
-
A Former Minneapolis Police Officer's Case Shows An Example Of Selective JusticeProsecutors say they can hold the officers involved in the George Floyd killing accountable, but many point to the old case of Mohamed Noor as proof that race can play a role in who gets justice.
-
In A Place Of Tragedy People Resist And Find SolaceThe place where George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, is now transformed, at least temporarily, into a daily rememberance. People gather to heal, to protest and to be together. -
New Charges Filed Against Ex-Minneapolis Officers In George Floyd's DeathDerek Chauvin faces a charge of second-degree murder in addition to earlier charges, and 3 others face charges of aiding and abetting murder. And there's a private memorial for Floyd in Minneapolis.
-
As break-ins and fires raged in the first days of protests over the killing of George Floyd, Minneapolis seemed to descend into a security vacuum. So volunteers stepped in to try to fill the void. -
Minneapolis neighborhood groups started taking up arms to defend their businesses when police all but disappeared from streets amid fiery protests last week.
-
Protesters are demanding that all four fired police officers involved in George Floyd's death be arrested. So far, Derek Chauvin is the only officer charged in Floyd's murder.
