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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Did an Israeli airstrike on a refugee camp near Rafah cross a red line with the Biden administration? NPR’s Leila Fadel talks to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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The Biden campaign plans a summer of outreach to Black voters. Pope Francis apologizes for using a homophobic slur to refer to gay men during a private meeting. South Africa holds national elections.
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NPR’s Leila Fadel speaks with Benjamin Preston of Consumer Reports, about why catalytic converter thefts remain a nationwide problem.
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Pope Francis is apologizing for a slur he used while referring to gay men during a meeting with Italian bishops earlier this month.
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South Africans are going to the polls, and the big question is whether the ruling African National Congress will finally lose its absolute majority in parliament after 30 years in power.
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Both sides present their final arguments to jurors in former President Donald Trump's hush money trial, paving the way for jury deliberations. We examine the prosecution's strategy.
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As many as 10 states could hold referendums on abortion rights this fall -- possibly redrawing the map for abortion access and influencing other presidential and congressional elections on the ballot.
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Israeli strike kills dozens in an area of Rafah. Closing arguments will be delivered in Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial. Wildfire officials in the U.S. are concerned about the upcoming season.
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NPR's Leila Fadel talks to professor Brenda Estefan and Lila Abed of the Wilson Center's Mexico Institute, about the cross-border concerns framing Mexico's election.
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More University of California academic workers are expected to go on strike Tuesday in response to the treatment of pro-Palestinian protestors on campus.