Price of Palestinian prisoner release, and gridlock hell in Lagos
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You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening.

It's Friday, February 28th. I'm Caroline Kelly. In a few minutes, our correspondent in Nigeria endures the bumper-to-bumper purgatory of Lagos traffic. Has the megacity found a solution with Chinese-backed railways? But first, men put behind bars for life in Israel are now free. It's the price Israel has paid to secure the release of hostages from Hamas in Gaza.

And that means some Palestinians serving life sentences for suicide bombings 20 years ago have been released. NPR's Daniel Estrin went to meet one of them. One by one, visitors greet a man they haven't seen in 20 years. Here's one shaking his hand, giving him kisses on each cheek. They're lining up.

Giving him a pat on the back. Are these friends, neighbors, relatives? These are his cousins. These are his uncles. May Allah bless you.

I'm with producer Nuha Musleh in a living room in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The curtains are drawn. Israel prohibits celebratory gatherings for the freed prisoners. Soldiers have come here repeatedly since the prisoner was freed earlier this month. My name is Yad Abdel-Ma'atiraj, I'm from the city of Khalil.

I am Yad Abushkhaidam from the city of Hebron. He sits next to me on a couch on his third day out of prison. He says, we as Palestinians and any occupied people in the world have the legal right to resist the occupier. I ask about his role. He says, I participated in the Intifada of the early 2000s, just like any other Palestinian.

It was the Palestinian uprising with suicide bombings of Israeli buses and cafes.

This was the Israeli TV broadcast in August 2004. A double bus bombing in Be'er Sheva, a quiet desert city. Sixteen Israelis were killed. Hamas claimed responsibility. An Israeli military court found Abu Shchedom guilty of preparing the two suicide belts. He got 18 life sentences.

He was 29 years old then. Today, he's nearly 50.

I asked if he thought about what he had done during his years in prison. He didn't want to answer. He wanted to talk about prison. He said the hardest period was after Hamas attacked Israel, October 7, 2023. Israeli prison authorities took away TVs and access to a lawyer. Inmates got a minimum caloric intake. He lost about 45 pounds.

He knew nothing about what had happened in the war. The day of his release this month, he says he was taken to a tent and shown images of Gaza, the Israeli army moving through the streets, bodies scattered on the ground.

Israel's prison services denied this is what freed prisoners are shown and declined further comment. He says he was in shock. He didn't know if any of it was real. It was the first time he learned what had happened in the war. Now there's a ceasefire with the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners like him. He says, God willing, after this war, everything will be over.

This is an Israeli radio interview with Chaim Uzan. His father was one of the victims of the double suicide bombing Abu Shchedom was convicted for. He said his dad had forgotten his grapes on the bus.

When he got back on, the bomber blew himself up. His dad's glasses and watch survived. Nothing remained of his body. In the radio interview, Uzzan says of the man who prepared the explosives, he was supposed to rot in prison, but, and there's a big but, he wasn't freed for no reason. Three Israeli hostages were freed in exchange. Uzzan says,

Uzzan says, inside Israeli prison he would stay alive. Now that he's freed, his role is known: to murder more Jews. He'll do that and he'll be a target. And I believe that way he can die. His family should be killed too. In the family's home in Hebron, we ask one more question.

Did he have any message to tell the families of those whose loved ones were killed in the bus bombings 20 years ago? He says Israeli troops killed his brother during a clash in the city in 2000. What should the world say to my father, he says. We too are a bereaved family.

Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Hebron. Lagos is Africa's most populous city, known for its vibrant energy, business, and culture.

It's also infamous for brutal traffic jams. Officials say a key part of the solution is trains. The first inner-city metro line has been open for over a year now, built with support from China. But has it made a difference? NPR's Emmanuel Akunwotu battled traffic to find out. In the morning rush hour in Lagos, I find myself in a familiar place, stuck in traffic.

The cars are bumper to bumper, drivers jerking forward into small pockets of space. For most of the 20 million people in this city, this is a daily reality. The average person here spends up to six hours of their day stuck in traffic, according to some estimates. But while Lagos' population has rapidly grown, the pace of new roads and new transport lanes has been painfully slow.

But over the last few years, the government has raised hopes that change is on the way. And from the stress of the congestion, I arrive in the cool hall of the Marina train station.

I head onto the Lagos Blue Line, a 13-kilometre rail journey connecting Lagos Island, a commercial hub in the heart of the city, to the western part of Lagos. This is one of two new train lines held by government officials as part of a rail revolution.

As the train departs, there's music, there's Wi-Fi, and Premier League soccer highlights play on small screens along the carried walls. The novelty of this is still so clear.

Some passengers take selfies and pictures of the Lagos skyline. It's been wonderful, comfortable, nice. One of them is Jeff Osamu, a doctor taking the train on his daily commute to work. So if you can afford it, I think it's the best way to go. This metro has been a long time coming. Plans for an intercity rail line were first drawn up more than 40 years ago, in the 1980s, but it repeatedly stalled.

Until there was an intervention from China. Lagos is a great city, great economic center. The Chinese ambassador to Nigeria, Chu Jianxiong, spoke at the official opening after China stepped in to complete the project with a major investment. But a year on, the question is, has it really made a difference?

So this is your first time taking the train? First time. One of the passengers on the train is 53-year-old Oluwainka Peter. He says he enjoys taking the train. It's cheaper than taking a bus or a boat and cuts his journey time by half. But he says most people don't find it useful because it's poorly planned. He and I are among just over a dozen passengers thinly spread around the carriage.

These trains were projected to serve 150,000 passengers a day and so far it's less than 10,000. Most potential passengers find it tough to reach many of the stations as they've been built far away from existing transport links like buses. So they're complicated to reach and when you get off the train it's hard to get to where you're going. The train carriages fill up by the time the journey ends but when it stops there's a stampede

Dozens of people rushed to get one of the few small buses waiting to take them to their final stop. Because if they miss it, there's a long wait until the next one. And when it finally comes, we're all back where we started. Thrown into the Lagos gridlock again. Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Lagos. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening. Join us again soon.

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