Free Republic

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld of the New York-based American Center for Democracy's Economic Warfare Institute warns that last July "al-Qaeda's English-language online magazine, Inspire, published an article called 'It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb,' which featured instructions on how to build an incendiary bomb to light forests on fire. "A few months later, Russia's security (FSB) chief, Aleksandr Bortnikov warned, 'al-Qaeda was complicit in recent forest fires in Europe' as part of the terrorists' 'strategy of a thousand cuts.' Bortnikov spoke of 'extremist sites [that] contained detailed instructions of waging the forest jihad and stressed that such a...

The attempted snow job by the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) of Tennessee which sponsored the joint Department of Justice/FBI event, "Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society," Tuesday night in Manchester, Tennessee, did not work with the 2,000 attendees. Claims that American Muslims are loyal citizens, partners in counterterrorism investigations, part of radicalization prevention efforts, and an integral part of American society for centuries fell flat, especially coming from the host organization that was formed only two years ago in response to anti-shariah legislation in the Volunteer State. A well-informed crowd responded with calls of "taqiyyah" when members of AMAC,...

During his speech at the National Defense University on May 23, President Obama sought to reassure Americans that they are “safer” because of the administration’s “efforts” to fight terrorism. The controversy over the administration’s handling of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, had been swirling for months. And on April 15, two jihadists set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding more than 250 others.At the National Defense University, defining jihad downLandov “Now, make no mistake, our nation is still threatened by terrorists,” Obama conceded. “From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically...

A man being questioned in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings who was killed in Florida early Wednesday by the FBI was reportedly going to admit his role in the 2011 Waltham triple homicide, according to news partner WCVB. Khusen Taramov said he and Ibragim Todashev were being questioned as part of the bombings by the FBI official and law enforcement officers in Orlando. Taramov said Todashev, 27, knew bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev because both were MMA fighters, WCVB reports. Taramov said they were interviewed nearly three hours, and at some point, "something went wrong," and Todashev was killed. Sources...

On the bright, beautiful, and crisp fall day that was early morning, September 11, 2001, few Americans were familiar with stealth jihad, or considered Islamic terrorism a threat to America. Yet, there was a voice crying in the wilderness, warning of a danger that already existed here. That voice belonged to Steven Emerson, whose documentary film titled Jihad in America was aired by PBS on November 21, 1994. Islamic militant groups in America, including CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) began their protestations and intimidation even before the broadcast date. Since the airing, the use of intimidation has been ramped...

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,...

Bill Ayers, the 1960's radical who went on to become a college professor and associate of President Obama, said Saturday the bombings he helped the Weather Underground carry out to protest the Vietnam War bear no resemblance to the deadly Boston Marathon attack - and glossed over the fact that his group's bombs killed three fellow terrorists and have been linked to the murder of a San Francisco police officer. “How different is the shooting in Connecticut from shooting at a hunting range?” Ayers told a reporter who asked him to compare the incidents after Ayers spoke at a commemoration...

BOSTON (AP) — Every time the widow of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev leaves her parents' house, federal agents watching the residence follow her in unmarked vehicles. Federal authorities are placing intense pressure on what they know to be the inner circle of the two bombing suspects, arresting three college buddies of surviving brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and keeping Tamerlan's 24-year-old widow, Katherine Russell, in the public eye with their open surveillance and leaks to media about investigators' focus on her. Legal experts say it's part of their quest not just to determine whether Russell and the friends are culpable...

WASHINGTON — The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings told F.B.I. interrogators that, as he and his brother plotted their deadly assault, they considered suicide attacks and striking on the Fourth of July, according to two law enforcement officials. But the suspect,Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told investigators that he and his brother,Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in a shootout with the police, ultimately decided to use pressure-cooker bombs and other homemade explosive devices, the officials said. The brothers finished building the bombs in Tamerlan’s apartment in Cambridge, Mass., faster than they anticipated, and so decided to accelerate their attack to...

The missing laptop in the Boston Marathon bombing has been found, according to CBS and WTOP. Authorities hope that the laptop might provide clues to any other accomplices, or at the least to the pattern of radicalization that led to the bombing: Investigators found the bag last week in a New Bedford landfill,CBS News’ Elaine Quijano reported. Sources tell CBS News the laptop has also been recovered.So far, there’s no evidence the three had knowledge of the Boston plot in advance. However, one of them did say that about a month before the attack Dzhokhar Tsarnaev casually mentioned he knew...

For seven minutes, five Dagestan rebels spoke into a video camera about killing infidels and how the “good deeds” they were doing would absolve them of “700 sins” committed during their lifetimes. Filmed by a Canadian jihadist fighter before he was killed by Russian security forces, the video offers a disturbing glimpse of the fanaticism of the rebels who may have inspired Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Tsarnaev does not appear in the footage, which was obtained by the National Post. But it was recorded and narrated by William Plotnikov, a Canadian whose alleged links to Tsarnaev are now under...

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...

Nothing more than a tweet from the Boston Police Department;s official account, but that’s spreading like wildfire on Twitter — for understandable reasons: This makes it seem as though Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev weren’t self-radicalized lone wolves after all.  We’ll update as more information becomes available.Update: It’s no hack on the Twitter account, either. We’ll see what the BPD has to say next….Update: CBS Boston has this report, which doesn’t go much farther than the tweet: Boston police say three additional suspects have been taken into custody in Boston Marathon bombings investigation.Their names have not been released.  Police said more...

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. ....

Three taken into custody believed to be college students who helped Dzhokhar Tsarnaev cover up for the bombing after the fatal blasts Boston police say there is no threat to public safety Boston police announced on Wednesday that three new suspects were arrested in connection to the marathon bombing and they are thought to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's roommates who helped him cover his tracks after the fatal blasts.  The Boston Police Department were the first ones to report the arrest over their Twitter feed, and The Boston Globe claimed that the three people in custody were college students and the...

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.

Barack Obama promised Tuesday that he would be taking lessons from the Boston Marathon jihad bombing: “When an event like this happens, we want to review every step that was taken, we want to leave no stone unturned, we want to see if there is in fact additional protocols and procedures that could be put in place that would further improve and enhance our ability to detect a potential attack.’’ Sounds great – but ultimately all Obama offered were words. Words that are unlikely to be backed up by real action. The one thing that needs to be done –...

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent a written warning about accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012, long before pressure-cooker blasts killed three and maimed hundreds, according to a senior Saudi government official with direct knowledge of the document. The Saudi warning, the official told MailOnline, was separate from the multiple red flags raised by Russian intelligence in 2011, and was based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen. Citing security concerns, the Saudi government also denied an entry visa to the elder Tsarnaev brother in December 2011, when he hoped to...

BOMBSHELL: Saudi Arabia warned USA IN WRITING about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012, and rejected his application for an entry visa to visit Mecca in 2011... Developing...

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) during a hearing on Friday said that he believes that Islam as a whole is a threat to the United States, labeling it as a religion that will “motivate people to murder children.” Think Progress During a hearing he chaired on “Islamist Extremism in Chechnya: A Threat to the U.S. Homeland?” Rohrabacher continually referred to the 2004 Beslan hostage situation — in which Chechen extremists took control of a school in Russia resulting in the death of more than 180 children — as an example of the threat that Islam poses. At one point, the California...

In the years since the Islamic terror attacks in 1993 and 2001 we haven't learned a damned thing. Our quisling media and our ever-more cowardly elected officials seem to be locked in a virtual death match competition to appease our enemies. On top of it all we also have a twice-elected president who considers our constitution a 'flawed document' and something of an irritating obstacle in the most craven power grab in American history. President Executive Order can't give away our American sovereignty fast enough and is about to demonstrate his power by granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens....

Judge Jeanine Pirro answers the public statements of Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, mother of the two Boston terrorists. Answering the questions, "Why didn't you send him to Guantanamo or whatever? Why did they have to kill him?" Pirro says this is an admission of knowledge that her dead son was a terrorist. Pirro also takes the Obama administration to task for sending a federal judge to read her surviving son his rights and ending an FBI interrogation. And she asks about Gov. Deval Patrick's decision to not "reveal what kind of taxpayer assistance Tamerlan got on grounds of privacy." "Privacy? What privacy?...

Connection or coincidence? The FBI and Russian investigators have begun to plumb the potential links between former Gold Gloves boxer-turned-terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev and a now-dead Canadian boxer-turned jihadi named William Plotnikov. Plotnikov fought in Dagestan for an Islamist terrorist network and was killed by Russian forces just days before Tamerlan returned to the US. CNN has more on Plotnikov:

Authorities in New Jersey allege a Muslim man beheaded two Coptic Christians, burying their bodies and heads and hands in separate graves near Philadelphia, bringing the horror of the persecution of Christians in Islamic nations to the United States. According to New York’s WABC-TV, the Muslim was identified as Yusuf Ibrahim, 28. He was taken into custody after the bodies were found. The report said investigators alleged Ibrahim killed the victims then severed their heads and hands, and buried the remains in the back yard of a home in Buena Vista, N.J. The report said the victims were from the...

Female DNA has been found on at least one of the bombs used in the Boston Marathon attacks, according to a new report. But it isn’t clear if that means a woman helped suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev carry out the attacks. U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal there could be several explanations for the DNA, including that it could have come from a store clerk who handled the materials the two brothers allegedly used in the bombings. A stray hair that landed on one of the explosives could also explain the DNA finding.

The timing certainly looks … intriguing. On Sunday morning, Russian forces raided the compound of an Islamist network once run by Abu Dujan in the Caucasus — a leader whose videos were in Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s YouTube page. The raid killed the brother of the current leader: It could also be a coincidence. Nick Paton Walsh reports for CNN that the Russians have been conducting these raids for months in an effort to tamp down Islamist activities in the Caucasus. The Russians aren’t drawing a connection between the two cases, at least not publicly. However, Abu Dujan’s network operated in Dagestan...

The Russian warning to the United States government in 2011 about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, was based on two intercepted telephone calls discussing jihad, both involving his mother, a law enforcement official said on Saturday. The Russian authorities informed the F.B.I. in March 2011 that Mr. Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who had lived in the United States for about a decade, had changed drastically, had adopted extremist views and planned to travel to Russia to meet with underground groups. The F.B.I. sent agents to interview Mr. Tsarnaev and his...

The apparent Chechen connection to the Boston Marathon bombings rang alarm bells within the vast US intelligence community. Chechnya has been a breeding ground for terrorism for years but it’s the first time Chechens are suspected of carrying out a successful terrorist attack in America or in the West. *******************************subscribtion required for full article***********************************

The MIT police officer who was executed in his patrol car on Friday morning was drawn into a trap by the Boston Marathon bombing suspects - who killed him for his gun - it has been claimed.Sean Collier, 27, died from multiple gunshot wounds in the early morning hours of Friday as he responded to a noise complaint.The motivation for that murder was at first unclear, but police now believe that the suspects shot him in order to steal his gun.

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...

State Rep. David Linsky (D-Natick) said he’ll demand answers from the Patrick administration today about whether there are any other Massachusetts welfare recipients on the nation’s terror watch list — or others with pending criminal cases — when he launches a Post-Audit and Oversight Committee meeting today on tax-funded benefits received by the accused marathon bombers. “I will be asking the executive branch whether or not they have a system in place to cross-check people on the terrorism watch list as well as pending criminal 
cases,” Linsky said. “I want an answer from the executive branch about what they do.”

Strange, isn’t it? We are governed by leftists given to finger-wagging about their commitment to due process and the rule of law — they’re not like those bad old warmongering Bushies. Still, here we are in the post-arrest phase of the civilian prosecution the administration was hell-bent on commencing — the phase when due process obliges government officials to remain mum about non-public investigative information that could taint the jury pool and undermine the defendant’s right to a fair trial — and we’re being inundated with stunning confession evidence. Remember, this is the same crowd that labels the Fort Hood...

The FBI has revealed that they now know the identity of the American known as Misha who helped radicalize the Boston bombing suspects. Family members of dead bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev have described Misha as the guiding influence in the elder bomber developing radicalized views. Speculation as to who Misha is has varied wildly in the past week, with some suggesting he is the mastermind behind the marathon bombings while others believe he could be a Russian spy - sent to identify and keep tabs on young men like Tamerlan who are at risk of turning to militant Islam. To date...

Full Title:*********************************************************************How carjacking victim of Boston bombers left his iPhone in his Mercedes so police could track them and thwart their plans to drive to New York ******************************************** FBI officials released surveillance video of suspected bombers on April 18 Hours later Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hijacked a Mercedes'Danny,' the car's owner says the men discussed traveling to NYC Officials have confirmed the Tsarnaevs were carrying a pressure cooker device and 5 pipe-bombs to detonate in Times Square Driver managed to escape when the brothers refilled on gasDanny says he left his iPhone in the Mercedes so police could track the...

Full Title:*****************************************************Owners of 'Terrorista #1' BMW license plate revealed as the SAME friends pictured with the Boston bomber in Times Square***************************************** Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev are from Kazakhstan They were classmates of bombing suspect Dzhokhar TsarnaevDzhokhar may have slept at their house on the night of the bombingThey've been in custody since last Saturday and a lawyer says they are 'shocked' by the allegations against their friend Friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev arrested last week who cruised around in a car with the ‘Terrorista #1’ license plate have also been revealed to be two of the group of friends recently...

In Hancock, NY an Islamic community that sits on 80 acres of land has decided to form its own government. They call their community: The Town of Islamberg. They have their own mayor, deputy mayor and five town council members. None of them are elected, of course. They even boast that their “town” provides departments of education, medical, finance and land development services. This Islamic compound has truly become a city-state. Though not recognized as a legitimate township by the City of Hancock, this Islamic community nevertheless enforces its own laws on the “citizens” within its borders. They do...

Carjack Victim Recounts Harrowing Night

The media theory over the last several days about the Boston Marathon bombing is that the pressure-cooker design came straight off the Internet and didn’t require any specific training.  That assumption ignores a couple of key points even if the bomb design matched those readily available on jihadi websites, such as practice and testing, of which so far the FBI has found no evidence in the US.  Second, any deviation from those designs would entirely negate that kind of “lone wolf” scenario — and according to the Wall Street Journal, the FBI now believes that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had to have...

So this is what Dzhokhar meant when he said they were headed to Manhattan to “party.” The surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect has told investigators that he and his brother discussed detonating the rest of their explosives in Times Square, senior law enforcement officials told NBC News on Thursday.The surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, initially told investigators that they planned to go to New York to party after the Boston attack, one source said. The New York police commissioner also gave this account Wednesday.Under subsequent questioning, the officials said, Tsarnaev said that the brothers had discussed a follow-up attack on Times...

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators that he and his brother were influenced by the Internet sermons of the notorious preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, Daniel Klaidman reports. Plus: the feds now know who “Misha” is.

The FBI works for, and falls under the authority of, the Federal Department of Justice, Eric Holder. Which brings in a strange series of questions regarding the stoppage of questioning by the FBI of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Megyn Kelly outlines the initial issue: Initially the feds proclaimed Tsarnaev would fall under the “public safety exception to miranda” which would have given them 48 hours to question him prior to the delivery of Miranda protection. The feds didn’t even need to charge him with anything right away – but they did. In addition, something, obviously unexpected by the FBI interrogators, was changed....

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Dzokhar Tsarnaev, accused of setting off a bomb during the Boston Marathon, has been transferred to a federal medical detention center in central Massachusetts, the Associated Press reported Friday. The U.S. Marshals Service told the AP that Tsarnaev left Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center overnight and was taken to the Federal Medical Center Devens about 40 miles west of Boston.

The mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the attack, government officials said Thursday. Two government officials said the CIA had Zubeidat Tsarnaeva’s name listed along with that of her son Tamerlan Tsarnaev after Russia contacted the agency in 2011 with concerns that the two were religious militants about to travel to Russia. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case. Being in the classified TIDE database does not automatically mean a person is suspected by the U.S. of...

CBS isn't letting the thread drop on Tamerlan Tsarnaev's six-month odyssey in the Caucasus, and neither are federal investigators, apparently. Russian intelligence says that the elder brother in the Boston Marathon bombing met with a suspected militant on several occasions while staying in Dagestan, and the US is taking a closer look at those contacts even as the younger brother insists the two acted alone:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO The Wall Street Journal has more: U.S. investigators are looking into a Russian intelligence report that alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev met with a suspected militant during his six-month visit...

Homeland Insecurity: The New York Times thinks the Boston bombers "self-radicalized" on the Web. But it didn't look at their mosque, which has churned out other terrorists, too. USA Today, on the other hand, did look at their mosque — the Islamic Society of Boston — and found "a curriculum that radicalizes people," according to a local source quoted in the paper's investigation. "Other people have been radicalized there." In fact, several ISB members and leaders have been convicted or suspected of terrorism, including: (snipped) Abdurahman ,Alamoudi,Aafia Siddiqui, Ahmad Abousamra, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Jamal Badawi, and The Tsarnaev brothers,

These Rocky Mountain right wingers, Rachel Maddow complained last night, there they go again, trying to thwart voting rights. Seems that a conservative group in Colorado mailed out a flier in response to a Democrat state lawmaker filing a bill that would make it easier to vote. (Video clip after page break)Maddow airbrushes away Obama pal Bill Ayers from her history of '60s era bombingsThe flier included a photo of people lined up to vote -- and two people of color had been photoshopped out of the line. The company hired by the group to prepare the flier said something...

The media and the pundits are all wondering openly where the Tsarnaev brothers became radicalized. They're wringing their hands out there. They're trying desperately to figure it out. Where did they pick up their anti-America, anti-Christian notions? Did it happen in Chechnya? Did it happen in the home? Did it happen in America? Did it happen on the Internet? They're all trying to figure it out. Everybody back then, "How did they get radicalized, when did this happen?" What do you think education in America is today? We talk about it here all the time, the fact that America's a...

Means, opportunity and motive are the three crucial elements of investigating a crime and establishing the guilt of its perpetrator. Many crimes cannot be narrowed down by motive until a suspect is on the scene; but acts of terrorism can be. Almost anyone might be responsible for a random killing; but political killings are carried out by those who subscribe to common beliefs. Eliminate motive from terrorism and it becomes no different than investigating a random killing. If investigators are not allowed to profile potential terrorists based on shared beliefs rooted in violence, that makes it harder to catch terrorists...

"I f history were to repeat itself,” warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1944 State of the Union address, “and we were to return to the so-called ‘normalcy’ of the 1920s, then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of fascism here at home.” The “normalcy” of the 1920s that Roosevelt referred to was a time of peace and prosperity. The decade began with Republican president Warren Harding commuting the sentences of political prisoners jailed by the Wilson administration, including the socialist leader...

So what is it about liberalism that makes it so difficult for it to take a clear, critical look at Islam, even while liberals have no problem excoriating Christians for every imaginable historical evil? I believe I can give at least a partial answer, if we take a big step back from the present scene and view the history of Western liberalism on a larger scale. Liberalism is an essentially secular movement that began within Christian culture. (In Worshipping the State, I trace it all the way back to Machiavelli in the early 1500s.) Note the two italicized aspects: secular...