Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Special correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson is based in Berlin. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and read at NPR.org. From 2012 until 2018 Nelson was NPR's bureau chief in Berlin. She won the ICFJ 2017 Excellence in International Reporting Award for her work in Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson was also based in Cairo for NPR and covered the Arab World from the Middle East to North Africa during the Arab Spring. In 2006, Nelson opened NPR's first bureau in Kabul, from where she provided listeners in an in-depth sense of life inside Afghanistan, from the increase in suicide among women in a country that treats them as second class citizens to the growing interference of Iran and Pakistan in Afghan affairs. For her coverage of Afghanistan, she won a Peabody Award, Overseas Press Club Award, and the Gracie in 2010. She received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award from Colby College in 2011 for her coverage in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson spent 20 years as newspaper reporter, including as Knight Ridder's Middle East Bureau Chief. While at the Los Angeles Times, she was sent on extended assignment to Iran and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She spent three years an editor and reporter for Newsday and was part of the team that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for covering the crash of TWA Flight 800.
A graduate of the University of Maryland, Nelson speaks Farsi, Dari and German.
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North Africans are blamed for recent attacks on German women. Police are raiding their communities — including the largest one in Duesseldorf. Some longtime Moroccan residents are fighting back. -
Germany is struggling with 1 million migrants who applied for asylum this year. Officials say the key to integration is education, and many schools have made accommodating migrants a priority. -
A majority Germans are afraid of what the coming year will bring, according to two new polls. That's a significant increase over last year, when less than a third of Germans surveyed felt that way.
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Months of training culminated with reaching the summit of a 16,500-foot peak, which they named. But there were frustrations and squabbles along the away, and uncertainties as they returned to Kabul. -
Berlin is a favorite among Hollywood's top directors and actors. In the past year, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2, Homeland and Bridge of Spies were all shot on location in the German capital. -
After the Paris attacks, refugees in Berlin have felt increased scrutiny, as police comb their numbers for potential threats. But many Syrians there say they fear ISIS as much as their hosts do. -
As the French government is pressured to prevent another attack, the prosecutor's office says the organizer of the attacks is dead. Tension from the attacks has spread to other European countries.
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The investigation continues into the deadly attacks in Paris on Friday, and in Germany, a major soccer match was canceled Tuesday after a bomb threat.
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Russian finally acknowledged a terrorist plot brought down a Russian jetliner over Egypt last month. In Paris, the Muslim community worries there will be a backlash against them after the attacks.
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Matthieu Mauduit is hoping to bring The Rolling Stones and David Bowie to the funeral of his brother, Cedric Mauduit, 41, an avid rock fan who was killed at a concert during the attacks in Paris.
