Rabia Chaudry Writes a Book about Adnan Syed’s (of “Serial”) Captivating Case

Last updated on: November 23, 2015 at 2:37 pm by Dilshad Ali

Rabia Chaudry Writes a Book about Adnan Syed’s (of “Serial”) Captivating Case 2015-11-23T14:37:01-04:00 Dilshad Ali

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Cover of Rabia Chaudry’s new book on the story of Adnan Syed

This was the logical next step.

Rabia Chaudry, the most vocal and dedicated advocate for Adnan Syed (sentenced to life in prison for the 1999 death of Hae Min Lee), has written a book that will be out in September of 2016 about Syed’s case. In an exclusive article in EW.com:

Rabia Chaudry, co-host of the podcast Undisclosed, and the person who initially brought Syed’s case to the attention of Serial’s Sarah Koenig, has written a book called Adnan’s Story: Murder, Justice, and The Case That Captivated a Nation, to be published by St. Martin’s Press in September 2016.

The book, which Chaudry is writing with Syed’s cooperation, “will reexamine the investigation that led to Adnan Syed’s arrest, share his life in prison, discuss new evidence and possibilities that have since come to light, and review the recent court successes — including a ruling by a Maryland judge to reopen Syed’s case,” according to St. Martin’s. Chaudry recently told EW that Syed’s case would likely not have been reopened if it weren’t for the popularity of Serial.

This is an exciting development for Syed and Chaudry, who had seen his case languish for years only to miraculously capture the attention of journalist Sarah Koenig and last year’s phenomenal breakaway podcast, Serial, which then captured the attention of millions the world over. I’ve greatly admired how Rabia, my former blogger here at Patheos, capitalized on the attention Serial brought to Syed’s case — from blogging each episode on her Patheos Muslim blog to moving to her own independent website and blog to continuing to report on the case and reveal court documents once Serial was over to ultimately co-producing (with lawyers Colin Miller and Susan Simpson) Undisclosed, a podcast that meticulously looked at Syed’s case from the beginning. Along the way she worked with countless citizen detectives, fans, lawyers and others — whatever it took to help disclose the truth.

Syed himself said in a press release (reported in the EW article) that “The first letter I received after being arrested in 1999 was from Rabia. Since that time until now, she has believed in my innocence and been committed to my exoneration. … Rabia, Saad, and their family are one of the only families that never forgot me. Over the years they never stopped visiting me, taking my calls, sending me letters and books, and praying for me. … There is no one better to help tell my story, and no one that I trust more to tell it, than Rabia.”

This announcement comes on the heals of the biggest step in Syed’s case, when just a few weeks back it was announced that Syed would be receiving a new hearing, based on new evidence that his lawyers will present.

In one of her first blog posts about Syed, right as Serial was about to launch, Rabia wrote:

I’ve carried the burden of not being able to do anything for Adnan in a permanent corner of my heart for years. It’s a place of deep grief and I can rarely talk about him or the case without crying. The pain of it has not dulled over 15 years and it remains precisely because I’ve felt like a failure. It remains with every letter, with every time we saw him in prison garb and shackles, with every time I saw his parents or little brother. It remains because the community in which he was raised forgot him. I hold a deep resentment towards the community for it. Other than my own siblings and parents, everyone abandoned him.

To read today, as she posted on Facebook the news about her upcoming book: “All for you Adnan. May you be on the book tour with me. Ameen.”

I think millions of us are praying/hoping for that, too.

The book is available for presale here on Amazon.

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