Free Republic

Stars and Stripes Forever? Or will the Hammer and Sickle fly triumphantly over American Soil? Be aware. Be wary. Understand what you are seeing and do not allow yourselves to become complacent. The country you save may be your own.

Osama bin Laden´s son-in-law has been captured and is in the hands of the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, two administration officials said on Thursday. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, was captured within the last week in Jordan, according to a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Peter King of New York. The lawmaker had been told of the capture by law enforcement officials. Congress was notified when Ghaith was taken into U.S. custody, the officials said.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A judge in New York says he finds it "stunning" that federal budget woes could delay the start of a terrorism trial for Osama bin Laden's son-in-law. ~~snip~~ Kaplan suggested he might set a trial date as early as September. But Ghaith's lawyer complained, saying public defenders are being furloughed for more than five weeks because of automatic budget cuts. ~~snip~~ In other news: Obama Plans $195 Million in Renovation and New Construction at Guantánamo/a>

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) dismissed lawmakers’ criticisms over trying a former al Qaeda spokesman in New York City as partisan politics and said he’s confident that the trial won’t present a security risk. “I suspect a lot of the controversy will be partisan controversy, part of the political games that are played in Washington,” Bloomberg told CBS. Bloomberg did not second-guess the Obama administration’s decision to try former al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith in federal court rather than taking him to Guantanamo Bay and trying him before a military tribunal. The decision has drawn attacks from...

Note: Photos included. SNIPPET: "Iran has allowed an al Qaeda terrorist who served as Osama bin Laden’s spokesman to return to Afghanistan. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti preacher who gained worldwide infamy after the September 11 attacks, had lived in Iran since early 2002, and was reportedly held under a loose form of house arrest beginning in 2003. Abu Ghaith’s departure from Iran was first reported by the Kuwaiti press, which has long tracked the influential cleric because of his following inside Kuwait and beyond. The preacher was stripped of his Kuwaiti citizenship in late 2001 after promising another al...

MILAN, Italy — Italian anti-terrorism investigators, poring over hundreds of hours of surreptitiously recorded conversations among members of Europe's most important al-Qaida outpost, say they are convinced a cell in Milan supplied false passports and other bogus documents to al-Qaida operatives who may have succeeded in entering the United States. The absence of any apparent contact between the Milan al-Qaida operation and the Sept. 11 hijackers, who spawned their deadly plot in Hamburg, Germany, could mean that other potential al-Qaida terrorists managed to take up residence in the United States before Sept. 11 and may still be there awaiting a...