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Shaimaa Khalil

A Pakistani executioner and his job

An interview with an executioner: ‘I don’t feel anything’

Justice

It’s not an interview a journalist gets to do every day — with an executioner. The BBC’s Shaimaa Khalil got that chance when she sat down with Sabir Massih, 32, who’s hanged nearly 50 people since Pakistan reinstated the death penalty. He tells Khalil what goes through his mind when he pulls the lever.

A girl cries before receiving polio vaccine drops at a government children's hospital in Peshawar on March 3, 2015. Pakistan authorities have arrested hundreds of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children against polio.

Facing a determined opposition, Pakistani officials tell parents to vaccinate their kids or go to jail

Health
From left, BBC reporter Shaimaa Khalil, salon owner Murtasa Misbah and acid attack victim Bushra Shafi, who got medical attention for her burns thanks to Misbah and now works at her salon.

‘For less than a dollar, you can [buy] a liter of acid and basically destroy someone’s life’

Justice

In Kurdish Iraq, the fight against ISIS isn’t just for men

Conflict & Justice

In Kurdish Iraq, the fight against ISIS isn’t just for men

Conflict & Justice
An Afghan girl named Spozhmai is held in a border police station in the southeastern part of Helmand province, Afghanistan.

A 9-year-old explains how she ended up wearing a suicide bomb vest in Afghanistan

Conflict & Justice

Last week, police in Afghanistan detained a young girl they found wearing an explosive-packed suicide vest near a police checkpoint. Now, she has told her story to a BBC correspondent and says she would rather die than return home to the family that forced her to be a suicide bomber.

A suspected al-Qaeda militant waiting at the state security court of appeals in Sanaa in March, 2013. Many young men in Yemen get swept up in security crackdowns and become radicalized in jail.

Sitting down to tea in Yemen with the mother of al-Qaeda militants

Conflict & Justice

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula operates out of Yemen. And that’s where BBC reporter Shaimaa Khalil found a mother whose three sons had joined al-Qaeda and now has a lonely life without her sons or a community.