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Outlook: Face to Face With an IS Leader

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Souad Mekhennet

05/07/2017 GMT

Face to Face With an IS Leader

BBC World Service - Outlook, Face to Face With an IS Leader

Journalist Souad Mekhennet has spent 20 years risking her life to talk to extremists

Souad Mekhennet has spent 20 years covering Islamic inspired extremism. She managed to gain the extremists' trust partly because her background is similar to some of theirs.

The journalist Souad Mekhennet has spent the past 20 years risking her life to cover Islamist extremism. She's met some of the most senior people in Al Qaeda and the Taliban and, most recently, one of the leaders of the so-called Islamic State. That meeting happened just two weeks before they released the video of the beheading of the US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.  In a new book called  'I Was Told To Come Alone' Souad explains how she's managed to gain the extremists' trust, partly because her background is similar to some of theirs. 

If you head out to the deserts of Morocco you might hear some haunting music.  It's not made by humans, it comes from the sand dunes. Why they make the sounds has long been a mystery. Even the thirteenth century explorer Marco Polo wrote about the eerie noise. But now a French scientist called Stephane Douady has come up with an answer.

Actor Javier Botet is the person Hollywood movie producers often go to when they need someone to play a monster. Most recently he played the tall xenomorph character in 'Alien: Covenant'. It seems like a natural career path, because Javier has always been fascinated by monsters of all kinds and shapes. 

Zoe Adjonyoh has turned her love of Ghanian food into a successful British business. Zoe's parents both moved to the UK in the late 1970s. Her mother came from Ireland and her father from Ghana. As the couple were struggling for money, they agreed that Zoe would go to live with her grandmother in Africa. She told us her story from her restaurant.

Image: Souad Mekhennet, notebook in hand, conducting an interview
Credit: (N/A)

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