Middle East Near You

In 2015 six young men were sentenced to death in Egypt for killing a policeman in what became known as the Mansoura Six case. Amelia Smith interviews family members and friends of the ‘six oppressed’ about conditions inside the prison and how their sentencing was more about settling political scores than acting on solid evidence.

Last week the UN put into words what many human rights organisations and activists have been saying for years now: that they are gravely concerned about Egypt’s ongoing assault...

Four years ago today 37 Egyptians were gassed to death in a police van outside the Abu Zaabal prison in Cairo. Temperatures outside topped 31 degrees and many had...

Dr. Hanan Al-Amin was in a makeshift operating room in the Rabaa field hospital when security forces burst into the room and ordered her and another doctor to leave....

Four years ago today the Egyptian army stormed a sit-in at Cairo’s Rabaa square and slaughtered 1,000 people who were protesting against the removal of the country’s first democratically...

The announcement of Israeli communications minister Ayoub Kara this weekend that he would revoke the press credentials of journalists working at Al Jazeera ’s office in Jerusalem and shut...

In September 2015 three-year-old Alan Kurdi was photographed lying face down on a beach wearing a bright red t-shirt and blue shorts. The young Syrian boy had been washed...

An Egyptian army tank ran over a car bomb in the Sinai Peninsula and didn’t hit the international press until a week after the incident

Amelia Smith interviews Abdugheni Sabit, a Uyghur activist who left China in 2007 and settled in the Netherlands. Sabit is currently appealing to the international community to put pressure...

Lofti Khalil was arrested outside a shop in Kafr El-Sheikh on 19 April 2015. His mother searched for him for over two months but heard nothing until eventually she...

A new play tells the story of Palestinian poet Taha Ali and how he rebuilt his life after the Nakba

Four years ago today the Egyptian army overthrew the country’s first democratically elected leader, Mohammed Morsi. In the aftermath of the coup Egypt’s armed forces suspended the constitution and...

Amelia Smith interviews Rasha Ibrahim, the sister of Rania who lived with her two children on the 23rd floor of Grenfell Tower in west London, which suffered a devastating fire two weeks ago.

Days after the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower, Nadia, a resident in the area, asked a reporter at Press TV why the media is refusing to report the real...

The hypocrisy of Egypt’s decision to join Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE in cutting off diplomatic ties with Qatar on the grounds that the Gulf state supports terrorism...

In February 2016 Lina Ben Mhenni began an initiative to open libraries inside prisons across Tunisia as a way to counter extremism. When she announced the initiative on her...