TERROR

Produced and directed this 5 x 1hr award-winning documentary series with VICE founder Suroosh Alvi. The series examines the rise of modern jihad, from the origins of al-Qaeda, to the emergence of groups like Boko Haram, al-Shabaab and Islamic State.

TERROR was developed and produced as a flagship documentary series for the launch of VICELAND in Canada, and for VICE News in the US and internationally. It received a 2018 Canadian Screen Award, and a CSA nomination for best overall news series.

Al-Qaeda

In the first, Canadian Screen Award-winning episode of TERROR, we travel to Aden in the south of Yemen, where al-Qaeda staged its first attacks against Western targets. There we track down al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda's Yemeni franchise, which orchestrated the deadly 2015 Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo, as well as the failed 2009 Christmas Day Underwear Bomber attack.

And in Jordan, we track down the rarely interviewed Salafi cleric Abu Qatada, believed to be closely linked to the origins of al-Qaeda.

Islamic State

We travel to the front lines of the war with Islamic State in Iraq to find out how an offshoot of al-Qaeda that spawned during the early days of the US occupation evolved, a decade later, into the global terrorist group that gained control over much of Syria and Iraq, and inspired thousands of foreigners to join their cause.

We learn that it was inside a former US military prison named Camp Bucca that Islamic State's leadership first met and became radicalized.

Boko Haram

In Nigeria, we track down the deadliest terrorist organization in the world, which has made the use of child suicide bombers one of its signature methods of killing civilians. The group gained international attention after the 2014 abduction of more than 270 female students, but that is only the tip of the iceberg.

In Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, we learn how a charismatic young imam sparked an uprising that, faced with state brutality, eventually grew into the more radicalized Boko Haram.

Al-Shabaab

We travel to Mogadishu to look at the rise of al-Shabaab, the militant group that carried out the deadly 2013 Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi, and also executed 148 people at a Kenyan university in 2015.