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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NPR's Leila Fadel asks Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison what concessions leaders in his state are willing to make to secure a further withdrawal of federal immigration agents.
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Hundreds of federal agents are leaving from Minnesota, poll finds a jump in disapproval of ICE among Democrats and Independents, the last major arms control treaty between Russia and the U.S. expires.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Iranian director Jafar Panahi after one of the co-writers of his Oscar-nominated film, "It Was Just An Accident," was arrested for criticizing the regime.
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New Jersey voters head to the polls for one of the year's first congressional primaries. WNYC's Mike Hayes discusses the special election for the House seat left open by now-Gov. Mikie Sherrill.
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Are the world's superpowers back in an arms race now that the new START treaty has expired? NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with arms control expert Rose Gottemoeller.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Wally Ziens, a former NYPD detective and hostage negotiator, about the abduction of Nancy Guthrie, mother of 'Today' show host Savannah Guthrie.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks to two staff members of the Minnesota school attended by Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy who made headlines when he was detained by ICE.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ahead of a possible partial government shutdown Friday.
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Senate scrambles to keep funding flowing and avert partial shutdown, border czar says he may withdraw some immigration agents from Minnesota, FBI seizes 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia.
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A Minnesota-based rapper who performs as Nur-D shares what it was like to be tackled and detained by federal troops at a protest site in Minneapolis on Saturday.