When Joseph Braude became the first-ever journalist to embed with a Moroccan police unit, beatings of suspects, curses on his apartment, and truth-dodging on the part of the authorities were all to be expected. Being involved in a covert investigation of a murder cover-up by the police, on the other hand, wasn’t.
Fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi, Braude studied Near Eastern Languages at Yale and Arabic and Islamic history at Princeton. But when a muder case file fell into his lap and the victim’s family declared their conviction that the police were covering something up, Braude found himself fumbling through the twisting alleyways of Casablanca along with the victim’s best friend as they probed for the truth.
Religion, sexuality and witchcraft all came into play as Braude unspools the story in his book, The Honoured Dead: A Story of Friendship, Murder, and the Search for Truth in the Arab World.
I spoke to Joseph about the importance of truth, what you can get away with under an authoritarian government, and being an undercover Jew.
This interview was first broadcast by 2ser FM's book show Final Draft, on Monday 26 September 2011