Asking Jihadists Why They Hate Us
'I Was Told to Come Alone' chronicles a veteran reporter's encounters with some of the world's most deadly militants.
In The News Piece in VICE
June 14, 2017
VICE profiles Souad Mekhennet and her recently-published book I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad:
Much of the tension in the book derives from encounters with Islamist leaders in these places, and her attempts to understand them. Among the most notable are her meetings with jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's protégés in Zarqa, Jordan; her travels to a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon to meet with Fatah al-Islam's Shaker al-Abssi; and receiving frantic phone calls from CIA torture survivor Khaled Al-Masri, who feared for his safety and begged her to meet with him (she did).