Souad Mekhennet

Last updated

Mekhennet in 2017 Souad Mekhennet auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2017.jpg
Mekhennet in 2017

Souad Mekhennet (born 1978 in Frankfurt am Main) is an ethnic Turkish and Moroccan journalist and author who has written or worked for The New York Times , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , The Washington Post , The Daily Beast and German television channel ZDF. She is a civic national of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Contents

Early life and education

Mekhennet was born in 1978, the daughter of a Turkish mother and a Moroccan father; she grew up principally in Germany, but spent some years of her childhood in Morocco. [1] [2] She attended the Henri Nannen School for Journalism in Hamburg and the Johann-Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. [3]

Career

Journalism

Since 9/11, Mekhennet has covered conflicts and terrorist attacks in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.[ citation needed ] She was one of two Times reporters who published the first story on Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, who was detained, flown to Afghanistan, interrogated and allegedly tortured by the CIA for several months. She also worked on the series Inside the Jihad, published between 2007 and 2008, in which she and her colleague Michael Moss interviewed various jihadist leaders, including the head of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. In February 2015, she was the lead reporter of a Washington Post story that first revealed the true identity of the ISIS militant known as "Jihadi John". [4]

Fellowships

Mekhennet currently holds fellowships with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, [5] the Geneva Center for Security Policy, [3] and New America. [6] She is the 13th Recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award jointly with conservationist Tony Fitzjohn presented annually by the Prague Society for International Cooperation and Global Panel Foundation. She is a European Young Leader (EYL40) alumni.

Books

She is the co-author of two books in German: Islam (2006) and Die Kinder des Dschihad: Die neue Generation des islamistischen Terrors (2008); and one in English, with Nicholas Kulish: The Eternal Nazi: From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim (2014). Her memoir, I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad, was published in 2017. [7]

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mauthausen concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp in Austria

Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of St. Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Myatt</span> British author, religious leader, Islamist and Neo-Nazi militant (born 1950)

David Wulstan Myatt, also known by the pseudonym Abdulaziz ibn Myatt al-Qari, is a British author, religious leader, far-right and former Islamist militant, most notable for allegedly being the political and religious leader of the White nationalist theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) from 1974 onwards. He is also the founder of Numinous Way and a former Muslim.

Abu Musab al-Suri, born Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, is a suspected Al-Qaeda member and writer best known for his 1,600-page book The Global Islamic Resistance Call. He has held Spanish citizenship since the late 1980s following marriage to a Spanish woman. He is wanted in Spain for the 1985 El Descanso bombing, which killed eighteen people in a restaurant in Madrid, and in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings. He is considered by many as 'the most articulate exponent of the modern jihad and its most sophisticated strategist'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Efraim Zuroff</span> American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter (born 1948)

Efraim Zuroff is an American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter who has played a key role in bringing Nazi and fascist war criminals to trial. Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, is the coordinator of Nazi war crimes research worldwide for the Wiesenthal Center and the author of its annual "Status Report" on the worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals which includes a list of most-wanted Nazi war criminals.

Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Islamic Nation Will Pass, also translated as Administration of Savagery, is a book by the Islamist strategist Abu Bakr Naji, published on the Internet in 2004. It aimed to provide a strategy for al-Qaeda and other extremists whereby they could create a new Islamic caliphate.

Nicholas Matthew Kulish is an author and journalist who reports for The New York Times. Since March 2014, he has worked as an investigative journalist based in New York. He is the author of two books, the satirical novel Last One In and the nonfiction book The Eternal Nazi.

Malika El Aroud was a Belgian-Moroccan who was convicted of Islamic terrorist activities by a Belgian court in 2010. She had ties to Al-Qaeda and was known as one of Europe's most prominent internet jihadists.

Monika Harms is a German lawyer. She has served as Attorney General of Germany from 2006-2011.

The 2007 bomb plot in Germany, planned by the al-Qaeda controlled, Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) affiliated Sauerland terror cell, was discovered following an extensive nine-month investigation involving more than 600 agents in five German states. The number of agents involved in a counterterrorism operation led by the federal police had never been the case before. At the same time, Danish police in Copenhagen were busy with explosives. A Pakistani and an Afghan man have been charged with preparing to carry out their attacks under al-Qaeda plans. Authorities said they were unaware of any direct links between the terrorists arrested in the two European countries. Three men were arrested on 4 September 2007 while leaving a rented cottage in the Oberschledorn district of Medebach, Germany where they had stored 700 kg (1,500 lb) of a hydrogen peroxide-based mixture and 26 military-grade detonators, and were attempting to build car bombs. A supporter was arrested in Turkey. All four had attended an IJU-training camp in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2006. They were convicted in 2010 and given prison sentences of varying lengths; all have since been released.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salafi jihadism</span> Transnational Sunni Islamist religious-political ideology

Salafi jihadism, also known as revolutionary Salafism or jihadist Salafism, is a religious-political Sunni Islamist ideology that seeks to establish a global caliphate, characterized by the advocacy of "physical" (military) jihadist attacks on non-Muslim and (takfired) Muslim targets. The Salafist interpretation of sacred Islamic texts is "in their most literal, traditional sense", which adherents claim will bring about the return to "true Islam".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karim el-Mejjati</span> Moroccan-French criminal

Karim Thami el-Mejjati was a Moroccan-French convicted terrorist who has been claimed to have aided the Riyadh compound bombings, the 2003 Casablanca bombings, the 2004 Madrid train bombings and the 2005 London bombings as member of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aribert Heim</span> Austrian SS doctor

Aribert Ferdinand Heim, also known as Dr. Death and Butcher of Mauthausen, was an Austrian Schutzstaffel (SS) doctor. During World War II, he served at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Mauthausen, killing and torturing inmates using various methods, such as the direct injection of toxic compounds into the hearts of his victims.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arabs in Germany</span> Ethnic Arabs living in Germany

Arab Germans, also referred to as German Arabs or Arabic Germans, are ethnic Arabs living in Germany. They form the second-largest predominantly Muslim immigrant group in Germany after the large Turkish German community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denis Cuspert</span> German rapper and Islamic State member (1975–2018)

Denis Mamadou Gerhard Cuspert, also known by his stage name Deso Dogg and his nom de guerreAbu Talha al-Almani, was a German rapper who became a member of the Islamic State.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jihadi John</span> Kuwaiti-British militant and ISIS executioner (1988–2015)

Mohammed Emwazi was a British militant of Kuwaiti origin seen in several videos produced by the Islamist extremist group Islamic State (IS) showing the beheadings of a number of captives in 2014 and 2015. A group of his hostages nicknamed him "John" since he was part of a four-person terrorist cell with English accents whom they called 'The Beatles'; the press later began calling him "Jihadi John".

On 13 June 2016, a police officer and his partner, a police secretary, were stabbed to death in their home in Magnanville, France, located about 55 km (34 mi) west of Paris, by a man convicted in 2013 of associating with a group planning terrorist acts. Amaq News Agency, an online outlet said to be sponsored by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), said that a source had claimed that ISIL was behind the attack, an assertion that was later validated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Schäuble</span> German writer

Martin Schäuble is a German novelist, journalist and writer of non-fiction books. His pen name is Robert M. Sonntag. His works have been translated into several languages.

Zehra Duman is an Australian-born Turkish woman who travelled to Daesh territory where she married a jihadi fighter. Born in Melbourne, Duman is reported to have been a friend of Tara Nettleton and Khaled Sharrouf, who travelled from Australia to Daesh territory, with their five children, in 2014. Duman's online recruiting activities have been the subject of scholarly attention.

Fatiha Mohamed Taher Mejjati is a Moroccan jihadist. She is the widow of Karim Mejjati, co-founder of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group and member of Al-Qaeda. Karim Mejjati is suspected of planning the 2003 Casablanca bombings and the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

<i>Hespress</i> Moroccan online news website, available in Arabic, English, and French.

Hespress is a Moroccan online news website, founded in February 2007. It is available in Arabic, English, and French. As of 2015, Hespress is the most popular news website in the country.

References

  1. Asharq Al-Awsat. "Asharq Al-Awsat talks to the New York Times' Souad Mekhennet" . Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  2. "Journalist Ventured 'Behind The Lines Of Jihad' To Interview The World's Most Wanted". NPR.org. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  3. 1 2 GCSP.CH. "Mekhennet – Ms Souad Mekhennet – GCSP". www.gcsp.ch. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  4. Mekhennet, Souad (June 2017). "How a Journalist Uncovered the True Identity of Jihadi John". Longreads. Archived from the original on 29 August 2017.
  5. "SAIS News Archive | Johns Hopkins SAIS". sais.jhu.edu. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
  6. "Souad Mekhennet". New America. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  7. 1 2 "I Was Told to Come Alone | Souad Mekhennet | Macmillan". US Macmillan. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  8. The Eternal Nazi by Nicholas Kulish, Souad Mekhennet | PenguinRandomHouse.com.