Free Republic

TEL AVIV – There is a common threat that links the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack to both the Boston Marathon bombings and the terror assault on the In Amenas gas facility in southern Algeria in January. The thread runs through al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, one of the most deadly members of the al-Qaida conglomerate. AQAP previously attempted several major attacks within the U.S. The group was the first al-Qaida member to comment on the Benghazi attack, releasing a statement arguing the assaults on the U.S. mission and nearby CIA annex were revenge for the death of...

May 9, 2013 Were the 13 Immigration and Nationality Act "reforms" authored by Barney Frank between 1981 and 2001 responsible for the Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveling back and forth between Dagastan and the US with a legal visa even after the Russian Government had informed the FBI and the CIA about his radical Islamist background? This question is particularly relevant now that it has become all too apparent that foreign terrorists with legal visas are still inside the United States even after 9/11. Frank's 1989 amendment prevented our customs and embassy officials from doing their jobs and denying...

Kizlyar, Russia - Last year, when Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent six months in the Russian region of Dagestan, he had a guide with an unusually deep knowledge of the local Islamist community: a distant cousin named Magomed Kartashov. Six years older than Tsarnaev, Kartashov is a former police officer and freestyle wrestler—and one of the region’s most prominent Islamists. In 2011 Kartashov founded and became the leader of an organization called the Union of the Just, whose members campaign for sharia law and pan-Islamic unity in Dagestan, often speaking out against U.S. policies across the Muslim world. The group publicly renounces...

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was apparently too dangerous to be allowed to go to Mecca, but not Boston. Saudi Arabia unofficially says that if Janet Napolitano read her mail, the Boston bombing might have been prevented. Britain's Daily Mail reported Tuesday that, according to a senior Saudi Arabian official, the Saudi government last year issued a written warning to our Department of Homeland Security about the danger of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the dead lead suspect in last month's Boston Marathon bombings. Separate from Moscow's now-famous multiple warnings about Tsarnaev, the Saudi alert "was based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen," according to...

Terrorist William Plotnikov carries weapons in this undated photo released by Dagestani branch of the Russian Federal Security Service. Canadian jihadist William Plotnikov told Russian officials about American Tameraln Tsarnaev during interrogations two years ago. The Boston Herald reported: A slain Canadian jihadi gave Russian counter-terrorism agents the tip that put alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev on their radar two years ago, Bay State U.S. Rep. William R. Keating confirmed yesterday — raising questions about whether Tsarnaev’s direct link to the known militant was ever passed on to the FBI or local authorities. Keating told the Herald yesterday his...

Two more people have been arrested in Seattle and New York, FBI officials said yesterday, as investigators tried to break up a suspected terrorist network they believe was plotting a bomb attack against a US target .... Graham Fuller, a specialist on Islamic extremism and a former CIA analyst, said: "I'm a little sceptical about the possibility that the GIA is now targeting us because it would have been accompanied by some kind of rhetoric. Therefore I would speculate that these guys are working on their own or hired by someone else." And Mr Fuller argued that Mr Ressam's Afghan...

The bombs used in the Boston Marathon attack were built in the apartment that suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev shared with his wife and child, a U.S. law enforcement official with first-hand knowledge of the investigation told CNN on Thursday. The official was not authorized to release the information. Katherine Russell, Tsarnaev's widow, has remained largely out of view inside her parents' North Kingstown home since her husband's death. It remains unclear what, if anything, Tamerlan's widow might have known or suspected, the source added. According to her attorney, Amato DeLuca, the 24-year-old widow knew nothing of plans to bomb the race,...

"At the time of re-entry there was no derogatory information that suggested this individual posed a national security or public safety threat." -- Department of Homeland Security spokesman Peter Boogaard explaining to FOX News that Azamat Tazhayakov, accused of aiding the suspected Boston Marathon bombers, was allowed to re-enter the country on Jan. 20 on a student visa, despite having flunked out of school.A Quinnipiac University poll taken this week said in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings 23 percent of voters changed their opinion on whether to allow a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. And that was...

A laptop tied to the Boston bombing suspects has been recovered and could provide important clues as authorities look into how the suspects were radicalized. Pete Williams, NBC justice correspondent, says the FBI has the laptop, although investigators have not spoken publicly about the computer. Both Williams and Bryan Bender, national security correspondent for the Boston Globe, spoke with WTOP on Thursday about the latest developments in the investigation. "The laptop could be critical in learning how they became radicalized and how they learned to make the bombs," Bender says. "(Investigators believe the suspects) became more religious, they became more...

The instant Jim Asaiante heard the first explosion, he flashed back to Iraq. "That was an IED," he said to no one in particular. The former Army nurse fought the urge to rush toward the wounded. He knew there would be a second blast. Tending to soldiers blown up by roadside bombs had taught him that. Asaiante paused and waited a few seconds. The ground shook again, a percussive explosion that sent more people scrambling, more smoke roiling down Boylston Street. While most ran for their lives, first responders like Asaiante swooped into action. In the days to come, first...

(CNN) -- The number of people potentially embroiled in the Boston Marathon bombings case grew Wednesday to include friends of surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Not much is known yet about the three 19-year-old men -- Azamat Tazhayakov, Dias Kadyrbayev and Robel Phillipos. But here is what CNN has learned so far. All started at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in 2011, along with Tsarnaev. Each is accused of removing items from Tsarnaev's dorm room after the April 15 attack, which killed three people and wounded more than 260.

Three new suspects have been charged in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing, two for conspiring to get rid of their friend's incriminating backpack filled with gutted fireworks after learning he was a suspect in the April 15 terror attack, and another for lying to investigators, according to an FBI affidavit released Wednesday. Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakova both 19-year-old natives of Kazakhstan and friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at UMass-Dartmouth, allegedly went to Tsarnaev's dorm and took a laptop, the backpack and some Vaseline that may have been used in making the deadly pressure cooker bombs that killed three and...

The World's Greatest Orator appeared before the press yesterday, and here are some highlights of his remarks: "This is hard stuff. . . . Maybe I should just pack up and go home. Golly. I think it's a little--as Mark Twain said, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated at this point. . . . Right now things are pretty dysfunctional up on Capitol Hill. . . . You seem to suggest that somehow these folks over there [in Congress] have no responsibilities and that my job is to somehow get them to behave. That's their job. ....

Two Kazakh men and a third man have been arrested by federal authorities in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings, a law enforcement official familar with the case said this morning. The two men, Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, came to America from the Central Asian nation to study at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was also enrolled. The law enforcement official did not release the name of the third person arrested. … The White House and law enforcement authorities have previously suggested that the Tsarnaevs may have acted alone without clear ties to foreign governments...

Breaking: Boston police take three Boston Marathon bombing suspects into custody By Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News National Affairs Reporter By Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News | The Lookout – 10 mins ago Boston police have three additional suspects in custody in connection to the Boston Marathon bombings, the department announced Tuesday. A spokeswoman at the Boston police department directed all questions on the suspects to the FBI, which has yet to disclose their identities.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Graham tells me something that I hadn’t heard about Boston Marathon bombing. As dozens of victims were sprawled across Boylston Street, many of them in danger of death, Catholic priests came running to the scene—and were turned away. Doctors and nurses were welcome at the bombing scene. Firefighters and police officers were welcome. But Catholic priests, who might have offered the solace of the sacraments, were not. ”Catholics need not apply.” That slogan was familiar in Boston years ago, before Irish and Italian immigrants took over control of the city. Now, after decades...

A drop in the bucket. Given Judy Clarke’s fee in the Susan Smith case, $100K probably isn’t much more than what you’ll wind up paying Dzhokhar’s lawyers to help him avoid the death penalty. And if they succeed, you’ll be paying for his upkeep for years and years and years after that. So poisonous are the politics of this that even local Democrats are vowing a full investigation. I thought the preferred “solution” here would be a variation of their response to Gosnell, i.e. what we need is more welfare/clinics so that impoverished people aren’t led down the wrong path....

Judge Jeanine Pirro didn’t hold back during her opening statement Saturday night when she lashed into Zubeidat Tsarnaev — the mother of Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. “We should not be required to breathe the same air as you, we should not be required to share the indignity of your presence,” Judge Pirro said in a direct statement to the woman now being dubbed as “Jihad Mom.” “We opened our arms to them,” Judge Pirro said about the Tsarnaev family. “Showered them with food, and money, and housing, and education and all the freedoms of American citizens....

BOSTON — The defense team representing the Boston Marathon bombing suspect got a major boost Monday with the addition of Judy Clarke, a San Diego lawyer who has managed to get life sentences instead of the death penalty for several high-profile clients, including the Unabomber and the gunman in the rampage that injured former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Clarke’s appointment was approved Monday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler....

Is this a reference to mystery-man “Misha”? To Tsarnaev’s wife, who allegedly seemed not as surprised by what happened as she should have been? To some as-yet unnamed figure who showed these two degenerates how to build something a little more advanced than Al Qaeda’s magazine described? Or to someone else? Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) told ABC News on Sunday that the FBI is investigating “persons of interest” inside the United States connected to the Boston bombing.“There are persons of interest in the United States,” said Ruppersberger, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “We’re looking at phone calls...