Justin Huggler was born in 1975 in the Channel Island of Jersey. He worked as a foreign correspondent for The Independent for seven years, covering the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and reporting from 25 countries around the world.
After graduating from Oxford University, impatient to see the world and with the recklessness of youth he moved to Istanbul, Turkey and became a freelance journalist. After six months penniless, during which he sold a total of one story, on camel-wrestling, he began to write regularly for The Independent and covered the 1999 earthquake and the conflict with Kurdish rebels.
He moved to Prague as The Independent’s Eastern Europe correspondent, and reported extensively from the Balkans. He was one of those who helped uncover the story of how Slobodan Milosevic secretly transferred the bodies of civilians massacred in Kosovo, where they were buried in mass graves.
He reported from the frontline in the 2001 war in Afghanistan, travelling with the Northern Alliance, sleeping on the floor in ammunition stores and warlords’ houses, and covering the prisoner revolt at Qala-i Jangi and the capture of the American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, as well as the battle for Kunduz and the fall of Kandahar.
He lived in Jerusalem for two years, covering the second Palestinian Intifada, travelling regularly to Gaza and the West Bank. He covered the occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2004, travelling throughout the country independently from US and British forces, often in disguise to evade kidnappers, and reporting on the hostage crisis and suicide bombing campaign. He witnessed the 2004 Ashoura massacre in Karbala, and also reported on the neglect in Iraqi children’s hospitals.
He lived in Delhi for eight years and covered the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, as well as writing extensively about India’s economic emergence, and reporting from the wider region, including the security situation in Pakistan, the Sri Lankan civil war and the military coup in Thailand.
He now lives in London and when he is not writing novels, works as a freelance journalist. For more information visit www.justinhuggler.com
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