The Line of Fire with Ramita Navai

Mais Al-Bayaa (part one) : I was asleep in my bed, three bullets came just above my head and the curtain was burned

May 25, 2022

Mais Al-Bayaa is an Emmy and Robert F. Kennedy award-winning Iraqi journalist and documentary producer. Mais has covered her home country and events in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In part one of this fascinating interview, Mais explains how her family were exiled by Saddam Hussein, the horrors of both...

Sam Kiley : It wasn’t a question of talking your way out of it, it was all over, it was just waiting for the bullet

May 18, 2022

CNN’s Senior International Correspondent Sam Kiley survived an attempted execution in Iraq in 2003 when he and his team were kidnapped while reporting on the US invasion.

Sam joins Ramita this week as one of Britain's most experienced and prolific war reporters - he has covered nearly every conflict in the world...

Shoaib Sharifi (part two) : Your head will be chopped after 4 o’ clock today. I felt, tasted and smelt death, and I cried

May 11, 2022

Part two: Shoaib talks about being captured by the Taliban, surviving two near executions, forming a bond with his captors, and how and why he stopped his fellow prisoners from killing their Taliban jailers.

Shoaib has been covering his home country for the last 22 years. He's a former BBC World Service Kabul bureau...

Shoaib Sharifi (part one) : My heart started pounding and the man with a dagger approaching to chop a head, and I fainted

May 4, 2022

Shoaib Sharifi is one of Afghanistan's greatest journalists - and has won many awards for covering his home country for the last 22 years. He's a former BBC World Service Kabul bureau chief who launched the acclaimed political debate program Open Jirga

(a co-production between BBC Media Action and BBC...