About this item
*Now a New York Times bestseller*Serial told Only Part of the Story ... In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus thirty years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. Syed has maintained his innocence, and Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, has always believed him. By 2013, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, Rabia contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life, in hopes of finding a journalist who could shed light on Adnan's story. In 2014, Koenig's investigation turned into Serial, a Peabody Award-winning podcast with more than 500 million international listenersBut Serial did not tell the whole story. In this compelling narrative, Rabia Chaudry presents new key evidence that she maintains dismantles the State's case: a potential new suspect, forensics indicating Hae was killed and kept somewhere for almost half a day, and documentation withheld by the State that destroys the cell phone evidence -- among many other points -- and she shows how fans of Serial joined a crowd-sourced investigation into a case riddled with errors and strange twists. Adnan's Story also shares Adnan's life in prison, and weaves in his personal reflections, including never-before-seen letters. Chaudry, who is committed to exonerating Adnan, makes it clear that justice is yet to be achieved in this much examined case.
About the Author
Rabia Chaudry is the public advocate of Adnan Syed, the wrongfully convicted man at the center of the podcast "Serial", with 500 million downloads, and her own podcast "Undisclosed", with nearly 80 million downloads. She is a wife, mother, attorney, and currently a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at U.S. Institute of Peace, where she researches the intersection of religion and violent extremism. Her regions of interest are Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
She comes to USIP from the New America Foundation, where she was an International Security Fellow, developing and leading a CVE community project in partnership with Google, Facebook and Twitter. She is the Founder of the Safe Nation Collaborative, a CVE training firm. Her work NAF focused on the empowerment of American Muslim communities in social media advocacy. Her firm Safe Nation Collaborative works on two fronts: providing CVE and cultural competency training to law enforcement, correctional, and homeland security officials, and providing national security and CVE training to Muslim communities and institutions. To date, Safe Nation has worked with the US Department of Homeland Security, US Department of Justice, the National Counter Terror Center, the Maryland State Police and Correctional Officer Training Commission, and the DC Metro Police Department. As a senior CVE analyst and consultant, she has worked on both domestic and international CVE projects with government and nonprofit sectors.
Rabia received her Juris Doctorate from the George Mason School of Law and practiced immigration and civil rights law for over a decade before moving into the CVE policy sphere.
Rabia is a 2016 Aspen Ideas Scholar, Fellow of the Truman National Security Project, a Fellow of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute, and a Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute.
Rabia is a frequent public speaker on CVE, civil rights, criminal justice, new media, faith & gender. Her writing appears in dozens of outlets and her book, "Adnan's Story" will be published in August, 2016.
Rabia is the recipient of the Truman National Security Project's 2015 Harry S. Truman Award for Communications & Media Influence, is a 2015 Carnegie Corporation Great Immigrant, and is the recipient of the 2015 Healing & Hope award by the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.
She is owned by the cutest cat in the world, Mr. Beans, and can cook a five course meal in under ninety minutes. When she grows up she wants to be a renowned author of many books, a fearless traveler, and the mother of the first female American Muslim President of the United States. She's pretty sure it's all going to happen.
