Free Republic

SEATTLE -- There are more questions than answers in the case of a suspected international arms dealer caught in Washington state with a stockpile of sniper rifles. Oliver King is an Iranian citizen who, in the past, has been a licensed gun dealer. King appeared in court in Seattle on Wednesday, accused of keeping a stash of guns and ammunition hidden in a storage unit near the U.S.-Canada border. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, King lied to enter the U.S. near Blaine last week. Agents with U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement became suspicious of King when he showed up...

TOKYO, May 19 (AFP) - SNIPPET: "The pilot of the Boeing 747-400 with 407 passengers and crew bound for Minneapolis turned around late Monday about three hours into the flight from Tokyo's Narita airport after crew found the two men who refused to leave the cabin bathroom. Reports said the pair, who identified themselves as Chinese citizens aged in their 20s, had boarded the flight during an earlier stop in Shanghai. Japanese immigration officials were questioning the men, who said they did not have passports."

Note: The following text is a quote: Manhattan U.S. Attorney Charges Two Brooklyn Men with Conspiring to Provide Material Support to al Qaeda PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, GEORGE VENIZELOS, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), and RAYMOND W. KELLY, the Police Commissioner of the City of New York, announced the indictment of U.S. citizens WESAM EL-HANAFI and SABIRHAN HASANOFF for allegedly conspiring to provide material support, including computer advice and assistance, to al Qaeda. EL-HANAFI and HASANOFF are expected to be presented...

Excessive taxation blamed - The National Center for Policy Analysis is reporting today that the number of U.S. expatriates turning in their U.S. Passports is rising dramatically. According to U.S. government records, 502 expatriates renounced their U.S. citizenship (or permanent residency) in the fourth quarter of 2009. This is more than double the number of expatriates renouncing U.S. citizenship in all of 2008.

A Pennsylvania woman known to authorities as "Jihad Jane" was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, making false statements to a government official and attempted identity theft. The indictment, unsealed Monday, charges that Colleen R. LaRose, and five unindicted co-conspirators recruited men on the Internet to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe, and recruited women on the Internet who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of violent jihad.

Aug. 4, 2004 21:16 | Updated Aug. 4, 2004 22:01 New Zealand passport scam takes Canadian twist By HERB KEINON The New Zealand passport flap is thickening, with Canada trying to determine whether one of the Israelis allegedly involved in the scam who managed to leave New Zealand is traveling on a stolen Canadian passport. Canadian Foreign Ministry spokesman Reynald Doiron confirmed to The Jerusalem Post that the Canadian police and other federal agencies are investigating whether Ze'ev Barkan, one of the men New Zealand suspects of involvement in the scandal but who has reportedly left the country, is traveling...

Two Passports A Minute Are Given To Foreigners As 1.5M Issued Since Labour Elected By JAMES SLACK 26th February 2010 Passports were given to foreigners at the rate of two a minute last year. Officials approved a record 203,865 citizenship applications, 58 per cent more than in 2008. Another 190,000 immigrants were given the right to settle in the UK in 2009 – a rise of 30 per cent on the year before. Citizenship pledge: The number of foreign nationals applying to be British jumped by 30 per cent in the final quarter of last year Home Office figures show...

UK denies report MI6 was told about use of UK passports before Mabhouh's death. The British MI6 intelligence agency was tipped off by Mossad that Israeli agents were going to carry out an 'overseas operation' using fake UK passports, the Daily Mail reported Friday morning. The report came several hours after a 20-minute meeting in London between Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor and a senior British diplomat on Thursday, over the fake British passports apparently used in the assassination of Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. According to the UK newspaper, a British security source quoted a Mossad agent as...

Snips: At least six people on the no-fly list were denied boarding in a 48-hour period between Saturday and Monday this week, according to the officials. Two of the six were stopped at London's Heathrow Airport.M. On Saturday, an Egyptian man on the no-fly list was stopped from flying on American Airlines flight 113 from London to Miami. The next day, Sunday, a Saudi Arabian passenger was stopped from boarding United Airlines flight 929 to Chicago. Officials said the man was sent back to Saudi Arabia by the British. In two other overseas cases involving people on the no-fly list,...

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEThursday, December 17, 2009 Guyanese National Charged with Smuggling Indian Nationals to the United States A Guyanese national has been indicted on charges of conspiracy and alien smuggling in connection with her role in the smuggling or attempted smuggling of four Indian nationals to the United States. Annita Devi Gerald, aka Annita Rampersad, 52, was charged in a nine-count indictment returned yesterday by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Texas. Gerald was arrested by ICE special agents in Houston on Nov. 17, 2009, and has been held without...

A State Department filing clerk pleaded guilty Friday to illegally viewing passport files of celebrities, the ninth current or former employee of the agency to admit to snooping. Debra Sue Brown, 47, of Oxon Hill, Md., pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola to one count of illegally accessing the files. Brown is scheduled to be sentenced March 23. Brown has worked full-time for the State Department since September 1995 as a file clerk and a file assistant in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, according to court documents. Brown admitted that between Mar. 25, 2005, and Feb. 7,...

Note: The following text is a quote: Eighteen Charged Following Multi-Year Fraud Investigation Steven M. Dettelbach, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, today announced that a federal grand jury returned a 23-count indictment charging 18 defendants with violating federal laws following a multi-year investigation into fraud relating to identification documents. Named in the Indictment are the following individuals: Vitaly Fedorchuk, 30 , of Parma, OH; Pavlo Mostranskyy aka Pasha, 45, of North Royalton, OH Sonya Hilaszek, 45, of Cleveland, OH Azamjon Asadov, 34, of Cincinnati, OH; Martynas Bojarcius, 29, of Palatine, IL; Jaroslav Wladyka aka Bohdan Borsuk,...

Note: The following text is a quote: Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMonday, November 23, 2009 Arrests Made in Case Involving Conspiracy to Procure Weapons, Including Anti-Aircraft Missiles Arrests were made today in a case involving a conspiracy to procure weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles. A criminal complaint, unsealed today, charged Dani Nemr Tarraf with conspiring to acquire anti-aircraft missiles (FIM-92 Stingers) and conspiring to possess machine guns (approximately 10,000 Colt M4 Carbines). In addition, Tarraf and other defendants — including Douri Nemr Tarraf, Hassan Mohamad Komeiha, and Hussein Ali Asfour — were charged with conspiring to...

Note: The following text is a quote: Man Admits Using Alias for Immigration Status COLUMBIA, SC—United States Attorney W. Walter Wilkins stated today that Sohail Feroz Ali Dossani, a/k/a Sohail Muhammad Jamal, age 29, a Pakistani national located in Florence, pled guilty to filing false statements to gain entry and citizenship, a violation of Title 8, United States Code, Section 1306(c). United States Magistrate Judge Thomas E. Rogers, III, accepted the plea and will impose sentence after he has reviewed the presentence report which will be prepared by the U.S. Probation Office. Evidence presented at the guilty plea hearing established...

“Two people showed up saying they are responsible for making the consular changes demanded by Mrs. Patricia Rhodes, that of Marta Zuniga and Fernando Espinosa,” said David Hernandez, minister counselor of the consulate of Honduras in Washington. “They came in and locksmiths changed the locks without saying why.” The consulate is now run by people appointed by former Chancellor Rhodes, Hernandez said. Mario Fortin explained that Mrs. Marta Zuniga was named to the consular office by the former president Manuel Zelaya. The actions of former Foreign Minister Patricia Rhodes affects thousands of Hondurans living in the U.S., who now cannot...

DALLAS - An investigation has been launched into a passport scheme involving the Mexican consul in Dallas. Mexico's foreign minister has reassigned Consul General Enrique Hubbard while the investigation continues. While working at the Dallas Mexican consulate, Hubbard allegedly allowed staff members to personally profit from selling passport-size photos and permitted employees to skim money from passport fees. The irregularities in the fees charged were detected by internal controls.

Has Obama ever held a UK, Kenyan or Indonesian passport? Specifically, the issue of whether Obama held a UK passport is absolutely relevant to determine whether he is currently a British citizen. (I will be publishing comprehensive research on this issue soon.) What passport did Obama travel to Indonesia with at the age of 6 years old? Even if you believe Obama is eligible to be President, the question of what passports he held and what nations he was a citizen of should be of paramount importance to all US citizens. But more important than knowing the answer to this...

Well, surely this will settle finally once and for all that Barack Hussein Obama was really, actually and factually born in the United States and, therefore, is fully qualified according to the U.S. Constitution to be the president that he has been since he took the oath of office on Jan. 20 and a second time shortly after, just to make sure. Not! In yet another quite possibly futile attempt to silence the zombie birther controversy that won't die,

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A vocal group of conspiracy theorists known as "birthers" are riling the White House with their persistent claim that Barack Obama is not an American citizen and therefore ineligible to be president. The claim that the United States' first African-American president was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, first emerged during his presidential campaign, but it has garnered more media attention in the summer "silly season," a traditionally slow news period when many Americans are on vacation. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs looked exasperated at his briefing on Monday when a reporter asked him, "Is there anything you...

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today admitted that the questions about Barack Obama's eligibility to be president simply won't go away, even though he contends there are 10,000 things "more important" for Americans to worry about. Gibbs appeared exasperated by the issue, even when it was raised by left-leaning pundit Bill Press, who phrased his interest this way: "Robert, I hate to bring this up but somebody has to … Is there anything you can say that will make the birthers go away?" "No," said Gibbs. "I mean, the God's honest truth is no. I mean, Bill, let's understand...