Beenish Ahmed
Criminal Justice ReporterBeenish Ahmed is Michigan Public's Criminal Justice reporter. Since 2016, she has been a reporter for WNYC Public Radio in New York and also a freelance journalist. Her stories have appeared on NPR, as well as in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, VICE and The Daily Beast. Additionally, Beenish spent two years in Islamabad, Pakistan, working with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, covering the country’s first democratic transition of power as well as Pakistan's education system.
Much of her reporting has focused on covering under-reported stories and adding nuance to major headlines. That included covering stories related to DACA and the #MeToo movement as well as reporting on the personal challenges Muslims in metro Detroit faced in taking a public stand against President Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban.”
She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and has a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. She was also a Spencer Fellow at the Columbia School of Journalism in New York, and an NPR Kroc Fellow.
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Defense attorneys are calling for the state’s top prosecutor to step aside from prosecuting felony cases against seven people involved in pro-Palestinian protests at the University of Michigan due to an “appearance of impropriety.” -
A Dearborn-based lawyer says immigration officials questioned him for 90 minutes at the Detroit Metro airport over the weekend. Amir Makled was returning to the U.S. from a family vacation in the Dominican Republic. -
Ann Arbor Judge J. Cedric Simpson presided over two full days of preliminary exams for seven people charged with resisting arrest and trespassing at a May 21 police raid on an encampment created to call on the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
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Ten years after the water crisis caused health challenges for many, students from Flint Southwestern Classical Academy join in a multi-county effort to test for pollutants in the Flint River. -
State and local leaders announced Wednesday the start of a financial assistance program to support expectant mothers and their newborn babies in Flint. -
Hundreds of people sentenced to life without parole as juveniles have now been released. In most cases, they’ve gone on to live completely ordinary lives that they had no reason to believe were possible for them. -
In early October, Warren-Gibbs traveled to Lansing to support legislation that would outlaw life-without-parole sentences for people younger than 19 in Michigan. It appears unlikely the bills will get a vote before lawmakers adjourn for the year. But Warren-Gibbs said it’s the job of adults to protect children. -
"Had proper threat assessment guidelines been in place and district threat assessment policy followed, this tragedy was avoidable,” the investigation concluded. -
Heightened emotions and incendiary rhetoric following the attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens earlier this month have stoked fears that violence will spill over into local Muslim and Jewish communities. -
Michigan sentenced over 360 minors to life without parole — more than any state except Pennsylvania. Half of them have now been released and 90% have been resentenced, in most cases to a finite length of time.
