Souad Mekhennet

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.

[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.

[4] In August 2024, Russia's Foreign Ministry announced that Mekhennet was one of 92 journalists, law enforcement officials, business executives, and academics to have been banned from entering the Russian Federation.

[7] 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.