Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.True-crime podcasts have been on quite a journey in the 10 years since Serial arrived. That series, which told of the murder of a high-school student and the man convicted of killing her, spawned a gazillion copycat pods dedicated to reheating cold cases, many of them dragging the genre through the mud. But there is a true-crime podcast that will restore your faith that series can still fly the flag for meticulous, ethical reporting. In The Dark is a long-running, double Peabody award-winning pod hosted by the journalist Madeleine Baran. It began life on American Public Media and released its first series in 2016 about a young boy who had been abducted 27 years earlier. Two years later came a second series about Curtis Flowers, a Black man from Mississippi who was tried six times for the same murder and who had spent more than 20 years on death row trying to prove his innocence. (The year after the podcast launched, he was released from prison.)This summer In The Dark, now a New Yorker production, has returned with a third season investigating the killing of 24 civilians by US Marines in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005. That the incident happened isn’t in dispute; the question is why no one has faced murder charges and been punished. This quest for answers leads Baran and her team to some dark places as they speak to Iraqi civilians, former US Marines and eyewitnesses, and pore over boxloads of previously unseen government and military documents.The first episode opens with a visit by Baran to Iraq to meet Khalid Salman Rasif, whose sister and extended family were among the victims. He had heard an IED had exploded near her house and went to check on her. Reports at the time suggested the family had died from the explosion but the scene at his sister’s house told a different story: there was blood all over the floor and walls, and marks on the floor where bodies had been dragged. Khalid went to the local hospital where he was told the victims had been taken. There, on the floor of a small, air-conditioned room, he saw his sister, her husband and their four-year-old son, plus his aunts, uncles and cousins. All had been shot dead.Subsequent episodes — there are four on general release so far — find the producers chasing down case files at the Marine Corps archive, which sounds dull until we learn they had to sue the US military to gain full access. After that they go in search of the ex-Marines who had the task of clearing up the scene in Haditha. What they reveal is horrifying but in no way sensationalised, instead offering a glimpse into the mindset among the Marines deployed in Iraq that their actions didn’t have consequences. Given that none of those involved in the mass killing have yet been convicted for taking lives, it would seem they were right.newyorker.com
