Free Republic

The Islamic State group (ISIS) executed another journalist in the group’s stronghold of Mosul on Sunday after a summary trial, a Kurdish official said. “The journalist Yahya al-Khatib was kidnapped by ISIS militants at his home on Saturday,” Ismat Rajab, an official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Mosul, told Rudaw. “He was executed today in the neighborhood of Bab al-Tub in Mosul,” said Rajab, who lives in the Iraqi Kurdistan region since the city was seized by ISIS in June last year. Rajab said the dead journalist was charged with spying for the Iraqi media and Iraqi military...

By autumn 2011, weeks after President Barack Obama demanded that Bashar Assad step aside and with the rebels making some modest gains on the battlefield, the question among the administration's Syria watchers was: Thanksgiving or Christmas? Apart from a couple of holdouts, the president's entire foreign policy brain trust was convinced at the time that Assad would be out by the holiday season; there was only bickering about just how soon. With the administration's most trusted Middle East hands – diplomats, generals, intelligence officers – predicting that the Syrian leader wouldn't last into 2012, the White House felt comfortable rolling...

The Washington Post reports this weekend that Kayla Mueller, an American held hostage by ISIS and killed back in February of this year, was kept as a sex slave by the perverted deviant in charge of the terror group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The family of Kayla Mueller said in an interview Friday that the FBI had informed them that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, had sexually abused their daughter, a humanitarian worker.Mueller’s parents said the FBI first spoke to the family about the sexual assault in late June and provided more details two weeks ago....

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) used mustard agent in its fight against a Kurdish militia in Syria, testing has confirmed. Unnamed US government officials involved in investigating alleged chemical weapon use by Isil in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakeh confirmed mustard gas had been used, according to the Washington Post and CNN. Mustard gas, used during World War One, can cause blisters, blindness and respiratory damage and is an internationally-banned chemical weapon. Last month, members of a Syrian Kurdish militia, the People's Defence Units or YPG, reported that projectiles fired by Isil's jihadists had released...

Obama White House Partners with ISIS-Linked GroupPosted By Matthew Vadum On February 16, 2015 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 17 Comments Ad sponsored by Americans for Peace and Tolerance published in the Washington Times. A Boston-based hub of terrorism associated with a top Islamic State propagandist and producer of hostage-beheading videos will receive the red carpet treatment at an anti-terrorism conference at the Obama White House this Wednesday.The so-called Summit on Countering Violent Extremism comes as President Obama seeks formal authorization from Congress to wage war against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL).The terrorist-friendly Islamic Society of...

Thousands of displaced Arab refugees, including a large number of Christians and Yazidis, are continuing to flee Iraq following the Islamic State's mass execution of around 2,000 Iraqis in the city of Nineveh — followed by a series of car bombs in Baghdad on Monday — resulting in dozens of causalities, according to Reuters.It's been one year since the Islamic State began its reign of terror in the Sinjar and Tal Afar districts of northern Iraq's Nineveh Province, which has included a hate-fueled campaign to wipe out Christians and Yazidis as well as other religious communities."Islamic State has unleashed untold...

Kerry also stated that the US walking away from the deal would remove any legitimacy for a potential military strike against Iran should it pursue nuclear weapons. If the United States walks away from the nuclear deal struck with Iran last month in Vienna and demands that its allies comply with US sanctions, the dollar may soon cease to be the world's reserve currency, the top US diplomat said on Monday. "If we turn around and nix the deal and then tell them, you're going to have to obey our rules and sanctions anyway, that is a recipe, very quickly...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Only the Islamic State (ISIS) can “fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” said firebrand Kurdish cleric Mulla Krekar, who was recently freed from a Norwegian jail. “The Islamic State is not something strange; it is the only element that can fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” he said in an Al Jazeera interview. The 58-year-old preacher added that all Muslims calling for resistance to the extremist Sunni ISIS “Caliphate” are “cowards,” and accused them of following orders from the United States and Shiite Iran. He called upon ISIS to appoint someone “with the courage to fight the infidels...

Archbishop Warda said: “All the statements (by U.S. government and media) have not condemned strongly what damage it is doing. What they are saying is just ‘This is not the true Islam. This is violating the picture of Islam.’ The issue for them is the image of Islam, but none of these statements speak about the victims, about what has been done to the victims, they are not even mentioned. And that is one of the questions our people have.”Indeed so. But most of his coreligionists in the U.S. don’t dare press this point, for to do so would harm...

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group has released a new execution video claiming to be filmed in eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.The video, too much horrific to be published, was posted by the affiliates of the terror group who claim to be part of the group’s Khorasan province.A group of ten men is shown being blown up after forcing them sit on Improvised Explosive Device (IED) planted beneath them in the ground.They have been accused of apostasy and supporting the Taliban militants in their fight against the ISIS affiliates and being the supporter of ISI.The authenticity...

In Al Jazeera’s latest Head to Head episode, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn confirms to Mehdi Hasan that not only had he studied the DIA memo predicting the West’s backing of an Islamic State in Syria when it came across his desk in 2012, but even asserts that the White House’s sponsoring of radical jihadists (that would emerge as ISIL and Nusra) against the Syrian regime was “a willful decision.” Amazingly, Flynn actually took issue with the way interviewer Mehdi Hasan posed the question—Flynn seemed to want to make it clear that the policies that led...

The Obama administration recently made changes to the Oath of Allegiance to the United States in a manner very conducive to Sharia, or Islamic law.On July 21, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced some “modifications” to the Oath of Allegiance which immigrants must take before becoming naturalized.The original oath required incoming citizens to declare that they will “bear arms on behalf of the United States” and “perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States” when required by the law.Now the USCIS says that “A candidate [to U.S. citizenship] may be eligible to exclude these two...

In a briefing before 22 Jewish leaders US President Barack Obama said that he is ready to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and discuss the necessary measures needed to make Israel feel safer after the Iran deal. According to Obama, sadly Netanyahu refused to hold a meeting. Saying the meeting would be seen as waving a white flag, because Netanyahu wants to continue fighting over the deal.

Catholic bishops from Middle East: If you won't help us stay, help us leave Catholic archbishops from Iraq and Syria said Tuesday that while they hope to help their people stay in the Middle East, they also believe those trying to leave are being unjustly discriminated against when applying for United States visas. According to federal data, since October 2014, 906 Muslim refugees from Syria were granted U.S. visas, while only 28 of Syria’s estimated 700,000 displaced Christians were given the same. Even when accounting for population percentages (Christians account for 10 percent of the religious makeup of Syria), the...

Media official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Mosul, Said Mimousini, said on Monday, that ISIS executed 19 women in Mosul, attributing the cause to refusing the practice of the so-called sexual jihad. Mimousini said in an interview for IraqiNews.com, “ISIS executed 19 women in the city of Mosul during the past two days,” claiming that, “the penalty decision came on the background of the refusal to participate in the practice of sexual jihad.” He added that the last period has seen splits in the ranks of ISIS in Mosul and internal conflicts because of the money and distribution of...

Islamic State is circulating a slave price list for captured women and children, Bloomberg reported, citing a senior United Nations official.The official, Zainab Bangura, said that on a trip to Iraq in April she was given a copy of an IS pamphlet, which included the list, showing that captured children as young as one year old fetch the highest price. The bidders include both the group’s own fighters and wealthy Middle Easterners.Bangura, who is the UN special envoy on sexual violence in conflict and was also in Jordan and Turkey, said she has verified that the document came from IS...

President Barack Obama has authorized the use of air power to defend a new U.S.-backed fighting force in Syria should it come under attack from Syrian government forces or other groups, officials said, in a move that could increase the risk of the U.S. coming into direct conflict with the Assad regime. The decision ends a months’ long debate over the role the U.S. military should play in supporting its few allies on the battlefield and comes as the U.S. and Turkey discussed joint operations to clear a zone along the Turkish-Syrian border of Islamic State militants. Turkish officials wanted...

President Barack Obama has authorized using air power to defend a new U.S.-backed fighting force in Syria if it is attacked by Syrian government forces or other groups, raising the risk of the American military coming into direct conflict with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. officials said the decision ended a monthslong debate over the role the American military should play in supporting its few allies on the battlefield in Syria. Administration officials had been deeply concerned that defending the Pentagon-backed force could inadvertently open the first open conflict with the Assad government, which has denounced the U.S....

ErdoÄŸan's motives in launching a military operation against the PKK are being questioned in international circles, with claims surfacing that air strikes against ISIL are a cover-up for targeting Kurds. Turkey has been candid about being disturbed by the recent Syrian Kurdish advances against ISIL, and ErdoÄŸan openly expressed that Turkey will never allow a Kurdish independent state in the region. Turkey says the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), have ties with the PKK. The PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by the US, but US officials say...

While Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama do their best to paper over the brutality of the Iranian regime and force through a nuclear agreement, Iran’s religious leader has another issue on his mind: The destruction of Israel. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has published a new book called “Palestine,” a 416-page screed against the Jewish state. A blurb on the back cover credits Khamenei as “The flagbearer of Jihad to liberate Jerusalem.” A friend sent me a copy from Iran, the only place the book is currently available, though an Arabic translation is promised soon. Obama administration officials likely...