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<p>In the year since Saddam Hussein was deposed, insurgents have killed nine former Iraqi weapons officials. All had been questioned by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG); at least two had been cooperating with it. Last October, ISG head David Kay said that one scientist was killed because "he was engaged in discussions with us." The most recent victim was Majid Hussein Ali, a well-known nuclear scientist. He took two bullets to the back in February.</p>

A judge has ordered 17 suspected members of Italy's Red Brigades militant group to stand trial next year, on charges including murder. Five suspects will be tried for the murder of a Labour ministry consultant shot dead in 1999. They include Nadia Lioce, already in jail for murdering a police officer. The ultra-left Red Brigades terrorised Italy during the 1970s and 80s, with a wave of attacks and bombings blamed for killing 415 people. Most of their leaders were eventually arrested and sentenced to long prison terms. Shoot-out But the group re-emerged with the murder of consultant Massimo d'Antona in...

This page is dedicated to journalists who were assassinated in the exercise of their profession. It remembers their contribution to freedom of expression, democracy and peace. UNESCO encourages press freedom and campaigns for greater safety of media professionals. UNESCO is the only United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom. Article 1 of its Constitution requires the Organization to “further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion,...

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...

Jihad in New Jersey By Judson Cox Monday 17th of January 2005 09:17 AM MST Yesterday, Hossam Armanious, his wife Amal Garas and their daughters, Monica (8) and Sylvia (15) were found murdered in their New Jersey home. The reason this family was so brutally murdered appears to be that they were outspoken critics of Islam. The family was bound and tortured, before their throats were slit in accord with the instructions for executing nonbelievers, as detailed in the Koran: (47:4) "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers, smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind...

Salam al-Marayati, the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), represents himself and his organization as stalwart opponents of terrorism who are actively working with the FBI and California law enforcement agencies to combat it. At a joint press conference with representatives of the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department on October 14 of this year, Marayati waxed expansive and almost poetic in his glowing account of his organization’s cooperation with law enforcement agencies in the war against terrorism. MPAC has announced a “National Anti-Terrorism Campaign,” and is holding its 4th annual conference (see its poster here)...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

News management may have reached an embarrassing low in the Los Angeles Times for March 23 where an article by staff writer John M. Glionna purports to offer selections from the FBI file on soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, who was under surveillance by the G-Men as a member of the executive board of the pro-Viet Cong Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Presenting items from 50 documents carefully selected from what it reported were 14 boxes of related government papers 12 feet high, the Times confirmed from the FBI and other witnesses that Kerry had resigned from the...

Until modern times, there existed no form of legitimacy in the Middle East outside of Islam. Rulers ruled in the name of God; assassins struck them down in the name of God. The assassinations of the early caliphs and the struggle between the Sunni rulers and the Assassins in the Middle Ages took precisely this form: each side claimed to act in accord with divine will, revealed in divine texts. Religion played a crucial role in the rationale of assassination, but it also played a crucial role in the rationale of government, law, and warfare—indeed, of everything. This invocation of...

Islam's Terrorist Dogma in Muhammed's Own Words Islam rises and falls on Muhammad. He is the religion's sole prophet, Islam’s solitary example, Allah’s lone conduit. Without Muhammad, Allah, the Qur’an, and Islam would be unknown. Yet the picture the Islamic scriptures paint of this man is not flattering; his words aren’t believable. According to the Qur’an and Hadith, Muhammad was a thief, rapist, and terrorist. It’s hardly the example you’d want your neighbor to emulate. Muhammad, Allah, Mecca, and the formation of Islam are completely unknown to secular history. All we know of them is derived from the Qur’an and...

The Secret Service clamped down on midtown last night to protect President Bush from a possible assassin armed with a hunting rifle. Lawrence Ward, 59, left his upstate New York home Wednesday with a .30-30 lever-action hunting rifle in the trunk of his car, telling a neighbor, "I'm not coming back." Inside his house in Bainbridge was a picture of Bush with the words "Dead Man" spray-painted near it, law enforcement authorities said. Bush was in town for a fund-raiser at the Sheraton New York before speaking today at the UN General Assembly. The Secret Service deemed Ward, a software...

ISLAMABAD - Osama bin Laden has called for attacks on targets in the United States and Britain, Pakistani intelligence officials said on Wednesday, but it was not clear if his appeal was accompanied by more detailed orders. "Osama has given the go ahead to target important places and personalities in the U.S., U.K. and Pakistan," one Pakistani intelligence source said. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said bin Laden's order emerged during the interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan caught in a month-long crackdown that has dealt the network a major blow. One of at least three top...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi official heading the investigation into alleged corruption in the United Nations oil-for-food program was killed in a bomb attack earlier this week, officials familiar with the probe said on Saturday. Ihsan Karim, head of the Board of Supreme Audit, died in hospital after a bomb placed under one of the cars in his convoy exploded on Thursday, the officials said. Iraq's former U.S. Governor Paul Bremer gave the board independence from the executive branch of government and appointed Karim as its head in April. The board appointed international accountants Ernst and Young in May to...

BAGHDAD, April 4 (Reuters) - The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq confirmed on Sunday it had detained Mustapha Yacoubi, an aide to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in connection with the killing of Shi'ite cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei last year. Yacoubi's detention stoked anti-American protests by Sadr supporters across the country on Sunday. The largest was near Najaf, where at least 24 people were killed when angry Shi'ite protesters clashed with coalition forces and Iraqi police. Khoei was hacked to death at a Najaf mosque in April, 2003 by a mob which also killed one of his aides. Senior clerics at...

The anti-war group that John Kerry was the principal spokesman for debated and voted on a plot to assassinate politicians who supported the Vietnam War. Mr. Kerry denies being present at the November 12-15, 1971, meeting in Kansas City of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and says he quit the group before the meeting. But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization. Mr. Barnes was present as part of the Kansas City host chapter for the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents are killing at least one and as many as five Iraqi intellectuals every month, hoping to stop people from working with the U.S.-led coalition, coalition spokesmen said Saturday. Still, they said more and more intellectuals and professionals are coming forward to help thwart the insurgents' aims. "Yes, the focus by the insurgents ... is to break our will by isolating us with attacks against all these institutions," said coalition spokesman Dan Senor. But at the same time, "we recognize the will of all the coalition partners who continue to stand fast," he told a news conference....

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 6 — Abdul al-Latif al-Mayah was never safe. Not before the war started, and not after. A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Mayah, a 53-year-old political scientist and human rights advocate known in his neighborhood here as "the professor," was driving to work when eight masked gunman jumped in front of his car. They yanked him into the street, the police said, and shot him nine times in front of his bodyguard and another university lecturer. In an instant, he became one of hundreds of intellectuals and midlevel administrators who Iraqi officials say have been assassinated since...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Iraqi scientists were shot in Baghdad after they talked to the U.S.-led team hunting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and others believe they will be in danger if they collaborate in the search, Washington's chief weapons inspector David Kay said on Friday. Kay, who is directing the WMD hunt as an adviser to the CIA, presented an interim report to U.S. lawmakers this week that said no banned weapons had yet been found. Some Iraqi scientists have sought relocation in the United States out of fear for the safety of their families, and others who...

WASHINGTON - An Iraqi terror team armed with millions of dollars tried to get smuggled into the U.S. through Mexico to Crawford, Tex. - the site of President Bush's ranch, a law enforcement source said yesterday. The alarming attempt to infiltrate the country occurred this month, the source said. It is not known what the Iraqis planned to do in Crawford, but Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein tried to assassinate Bush's father, the former President George Bush, in 1993. The unidentified Iraqis wanted to hire smugglers to sneak them into the U.S. because they "wanted to get to the Crawford ranch,"...

Controversial U.K. spy agency could serve as model for U.S. MI-5 long accused of abusing power, but it has lost some of secrecy 12/26/2002 By GREGORY KATZ / The Dallas Morning News LONDON - Britain's controversial domestic spy unit, MI-5, is emerging as a model for a possible U.S. agency that may be created to take over the FBI's role in the expanding fight against terrorism. U.S. lawmakers look to MI-5 - once so secret that even its director's identity was kept from the public - as proof that an internal spy unit can exist in a democracy without...