Free Republic

An Iraqi migrant suspected of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in western Germany has been caught by Kurdish forces in Iraq, Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Friday, one day after German police issued an international warrant for his arrest. Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old asylum-seeker, was arrested in northern Iraq early Friday at Germany’s request, police said. He had fled from Germany to Iraq via Istanbul with his family on June 2. “I thank the participating Kurdish security forces for making the arrest possible,” Seehofer said. Susanna Maria Feldman, a resident in the western German city of...

BEIRUT - Syria´s embattled president marked Easter with a tour Sunday of an ancient Christian village recently recaptured by his forces, an important symbolic prize for his government ahead of coming presidential elections he appears poised to contest. President Bashar Assad´s visit to Maaloula, some 40 miles northeast of Damascus, serves a propaganda victory for his government in its quest to be seen as protector of religious minorities as its civil war grinds on. (Snip) Rebels, including fighters from the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, seized Maaloula several times late last year, most recently in December.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: All right. So here's the deal. Last week, Obama reverses himself and says that he's not gonna go into Syria. Remember, they're using nerve gas. John Kerry goes out there, 1,500 people, 2,400 people, a lot of kids, nerve gas, sarin gas, got the proof. Look, I'm gonna get into all the hypocrisy. Yes, Kerry dining with Bashar back in 2009 and talking about what a great guy Bashar was. The bottom line is this administration is as incompetent as Jimmy Carter. There's only one difference. If there were anybody else running this administration right now, this...

Syria's government has passed a bill lifting the country's emergency law, in place for 48 years, just hours after security forces fired on protesters. Tuesday's move is a key demand of pro-reform demonstrators who have been holding protests across the country for weeks. A senior lawyer said Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president, was yet to sign the legislation, but that his signature was a formality. According to the country's official SANA news agency the government also abolished the state security court, which handled the trials of political prisoners, and approved a new law allowing the right to peaceful protests. However the...

DAMASCUS, Syria - Syrian President Bashar Assad issued an order Saturday for a special committee to investigate any Syrian involvement in the assassination of a former prime minister in neighboring Lebanon, the state news agency said. The move comes as the U.N. Security Council considers a U.N. investigator's report that implicated top Syrian and Lebanese security officials in the Feb. 14 killing of Rafik Hariri and accused Assad's regime of not cooperating with the probe. Syria sharply disputed the report's findings, but said it would cooperate in the U.N. investigation, which has been extended until Dec. 15. Assad ordered the...

BEIRUT, March 25, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad was reportedly to declare a detailed schedule of widrawing his troops from Lebanon, as a UN fact-finding mission report found Lebanon’s inquiry into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Al-Hariri seriously flawed and held Syria responsible for insecurity and disorder in its neighbor Arab country. The reported announcement is seen as critical to the organization of Lebanese parliamentary elections in May. Interviewed by French television Thursday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Assad was now within days of announcing a schedule for the withdrawal of the...

DAMASCUS, Syria (CNN) -- Lebanese army troops and armored vehicles took up positions Saturday around the Syrian intelligence headquarters in Beirut. The move comes ahead of an expected announcement from Syrian President Bashar Assad, within a few hours, that he will withdraw some troops from Lebanon and redeploy others within the country. * * * Massive Lebanese protests and mounting international concern is pressuring Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. U.S. President Bush added to the pressure Friday, saying, "The world is beginning to speak with one voice. We want that democracy in Lebanon to succeed, and we know...

This was linked on Ace of Spades. I thought it was funny.

THE HEREDITARY president of Syria, Bashar Assad, has earned a reputation for reckless behavior, the antithesis of his father Hafez Assad's careful, calculating statecraft. By his bungling, Bashar has begun to undo all the patient work his paternal predecessor did to colonize neighboring Lebanon. The son has also misplayed the delicate game his father had mastered of balancing Syria's intertwined relations with Israel, disparate Palestinian factions, and Washington. But recent disclosures by officials of Iraq's interim government suggest that Bashar's most flagrant and dangerous blunder is to tolerate, or perhaps even collude with, exiled former officials from Saddam Hussein's regime...

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrian President Bashar Assad on Wednesday accused the Israeli government of following "the policies of escalation and extremism," making the Middle East a more dangerous place.In a speech at a banquet honoring Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Assad turned to Syria's recurring theme that Israel and its occupation of war-conquered Arab lands were at the core of Palestinian-Israeli violence and turmoil throughout the region. Assad accused Israel of rejecting an Arab willingness to make peace. He claimed that tension throughout the region was due to "the policies of escalation and extremism the Israeli government...

<p>Seasoned observers long ago abandoned the hope they once had, in the days after the death in June 2000 of the dictator Hafez al-Assad, of any change in Syria. But even they were surprised at how Assad's son and heir, Bashar, handled the most important test of his short period in power -- the war to oust Saddam Hussein.</p>

Syria-ous TroubleBy Donnel Jones, May 19, 2003 It is probably a commonplace, after September 11th, to note the realism and sheer believeability of black satire. How hilarious, now, is the topsy-turvy madness of Monty Python when "Baghdad Bob" announces the imminent ruin of American forces just as Baghdad itself is falling to them? Does Joseph Heller's pitiless novel, Catch 22, hold anything more heart-breaking yet numbingly bizarre than Saddam's children's prisons? What can compare in the real world to the lurid recesses of perversion and cruelty found in David Lynch's suburban settings? How about the blood libel taught to...

U.S. to Syria: Don't Be 'On Wrong Side of History'Sun May 11, 2003 03:02 PM ET JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday that Syria would find itself "on the wrong side of history" if it tried to destabilize postwar Iraq or continue harboring radical Palestinian groups. Powell spoke in an Israeli television interview after launching talks with Israel and the Palestinians on implementing a new "road map" peace plan. He said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should have "every incentive to respond" to issues he raised in talks with him in Damascus a week ago addressing...