Free Republic

NEAR LA JOYA — A Texas Department of Public Safety sharpshooter opened fire on an evading vehicle loaded with suspected illegal immigrants, leaving at least two people dead. A Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game warden attempted to pull over a vehicle suspected of smuggling immigrants Thursday afternoon along Farm-to-Market Road 2221. A DPS helicopter was called in to assist in the pursuit and a sharpshooter opened fire on the evading vehicle — a policy permitted by the agency. Once the smuggler's vehicle stopped along FM 2221 near Mile 7 Road, troopers found three people shot inside, DPS spokeswoman Katherine...

While negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are at a standstill, news this week indicates that Iran is clearly losing the economic battle. As in other cases, currency problems in Iran may contribute to an unpredictable and destabilizing political outcome. Iran’s currency fell by more than 18 percent against the dollar on Monday and another 8 percent on Tuesday, marking a new low in Iran’s continuing economic crisis. The figures are grim: a sheaf of rials worth ten thousand dollars a year ago would be worth about $3,750 Monday and $3,500 Tuesday; on Wednesday, there were protests in the bazaar.Short of...

March 24, 2009 Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/March/09-nsd-264.html Irish Trading Firm and Its Officers Charged in Scheme to Supply Iran with Sensitive U.S. Technology WASHINGTON – An Irish trading company and three of its officers have been charged with purchasing helicopter engines and other aircraft components from U.S. firms and illegally exporting them to Iran using companies in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. Among the alleged recipients of these U.S. goods was an Iranian military firm that has since been designated by the United States for being owned or controlled by entities involved in Iran’s nuclear...

Missing a Father in Iran Daniel Levinson June 22, 2008 It has been 471 days since my father, Robert "Bob" Levinson, went missing in Iran -- more than the 444 days that 52 American diplomats were held hostage after they were seized in Iran in 1979. These past 15 months have brought my mother, four sisters, two brothers and me nothing but grief and sadness. We are no closer to finding answers than we were when our father disappeared March 9, 2007, on Kish Island, Iran. He was on a private business trip, and I emphasize "private" because, although he...

Authorities in Arizona unearthed a sophisticated 240-yard drug-smuggling tunnel stretching into Mexico that included engineered support beams, lights and ventilation. The six-foot-high corridor ran from a store in an abandoned strip mall near Yuma to an ice shop across the border in San Luis Rio Colorado. It provided a direct link to the US for Mexican drug cartels. The Mexican Army also found a second, incomplete, tunnel under a bathroom sink in Tijuana that stretched more than 200 yards into San Diego, California. The diggers had not yet reached the surface when authorities shut it down.

The demand for cheap cigarettes in Europe is fueling the manufacture and consumption of illicit tobacco at unprecedented levels. A report, released on Wednesday (20 June) by Philip Morris International (PMI), says Europeans smoked more than 65 billion illicit cigarettes in 2011. Of those, more than 12 billion were consumed in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and Malta. Western and central EU countries consumed a combined total of 36.5 billion. But in Spain alone, cigarette contraband jumped by 300 percent in 2011 compared to 2010. In Greece, illicit consumption increased five-fold compared to 2008. “Despite efforts by law enforcement authorities...

McALLEN — Federal jurors Thursday convicted a San Juan man in an immigrant smuggling case involving a 16-year-old girl with whom he tried to have sex. Pedro Salazar, 56, was convicted Thursday of conspiracy and harboring illegal aliens in U.S. District Court in McAllen. Jurors spent less than three hours deliberating the verdict following a two-day trial. Prosecutors said a group of three illegal immigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala fled a two-vehicle accident Feb. 24.After the group hid in the brush for a few hours, they wandered down a road, where Salazar passed and asked if they needed help....

routine traffic stop resulted in the discovery of a human trafficking operation, according to law enforcement officials. Fairfax County police pulled over a white Ford E-350 with Texas plates on Interstate 66 on Wednesday and found 19 people jammed inside the van, including 18 illegal aliens, charging documents said. Police called in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who charged two people with transportation of illegal aliens. Sixteen of the passengers were from Guatemala. The 17th, an unaccompanied 11-year-old girl, was from El Salvador. Overloaded vans are dangerous, experts say. In April, nine illegal immigrants were killed when a Chevy...

A mother in Texas has been arrested for allegedly using her children and teenage sister to smuggle narco cash from Dallas to Mexico. After pulling over Betzabeth Perez-Torres, 23, in a Mercedes Benz in Combes en route to Brownsville, an officer noticed the three children in the car were fidgeting. The officer became suspicious when Perez-Torres told the children to stop fidgeting and to keep their coats on. The officer eventually discovered the children had cash in plastic bags wrapped around their waists and hidden by the coats. The two younger children, aged 2 and 6, are said to have...

The sixth season of Locked Up Abroad premiers tonight on National Geographic Channel. The modern day morality play tells the true-to-life stories of persons arrested in foreign countries (usually for smuggling drugs) and thrown in prison. My favorite episode of the series appeared last season. It featured Brigene Young, who was a 20-year old South African barmaid when she got caught up in a heroin sting in Mauritius, the island nation roughly 1,250 miles off the southeast coast of the African continent. The gullible young woman was offered an all-expenses-paid holiday to the tropical island by a guy she met...

PALMVIEW, Texas (AP) — A 15-year-old South Texas boy has been charged with nine counts of murder among other charges after a van he was driving crashed, killing nine of the suspected illegal immigrants packed inside. The boy, who is not being identified because he is a juvenile, appeared at a probable cause hearing Monday. He was also charged with 17 counts of smuggling a person and causing serious bodily harm including death, and one count of evading.

The minister of culture and tourism on Thursday confirmed media reports suggesting that a 1,500-year-old Bible that was discovered by Turkish police during an anti-smuggling operation in 2000 is being kept in Ankara today. According to media reports on Thursday, the Bible was seized from a gang smuggling artifacts during a police operation in southern Turkey in 2010 and reportedly preserves its originality and many traces of the period in which it originated. The gang was reportedly convicted of smuggling various items seized during the operation, including the Bible, and all the artifacts were kept in a safe at an...

To expedite his commute to the University of Texas at El Paso, where he studies music education, Andres received a special pass from U.S. Customs and Border Protection after passing a rigorous background check. Applicants have their fingerprints taken and must complete an in-person interview with a Customs and Border Protection officer. They cannot have any previous criminal history. The SENTRI (which stands for Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection) pass allowed Andres to waive the standard vehicle check at the border crossing. Most of the time, the border guards just peered inside his vehicle and waved him through....

For citizens going into battle against Afghanistan's officialdom, the warren-like building across the road from the headquarters of Kabul's police chief is a one-stop shop for every document they could need. From their tiny cubbyhole offices, an army of typists can run up everything from marriage certificates to CVs and job application letters. Also available, for several hundred dollars more: Taliban death threats, the special chits also known as "night letters" that can be a passport to a new life in the west. "We can write whatever you need; it depends," said one young clerk. "For example, we will mention...

Man 'visited N. Korea to buy bogus U.S. bills' The Yomiuri Shimbun An 80-year-old Sapporo man released by North Korea after his arrest last year said he went there with two other Japanese men to obtain counterfeit U.S. currency, according to Hokkaido police. The two other men remain in custody in north Korea. The three were arrested last March for allegedly dealing in drugs. According to the man, the three received extremely realistic-looking counterfeit U.S. bills in North korea. Police believe the bills were "supernotes" in 100 dollars denominations. The police are trying to corroborate the man's story. The man...

A young woman sits cross-legged on the ground laughing playfully as she is fed a lychee. Another plays cards in pair of baggy pink pyjamas. The moving images could show any group of young women as they go about their daily lives in prison. But just hours - and in some cases minutes - after the pictures were taken, each of the four women were led into a concrete yard and executed.

“I have learned to live with trash,” said fifth-generation Arizona rancher Jim Chilton.He saw his once-beautiful ranch, just a few miles from the border with Mexico, is now dotted with clusters of crushed trees and cactus, whole hillsides have been turned into charred eyesores, years worth of his award-winning conservation projects obliterated — and the whole thing is littered with trash, tons and tons of trash. And some of the trash was dead bodies. Chilton had the misfortune of settling in the path of what would become a dangerous drug- and human-smuggling route on the U.S.-Mexican border, parallel with the...

A one-vehicle accident on rural Highway 141 on Monday triggered a search through the desert for passengers and eventually led to the arrest of one man for suspicion of human smuggling and the pending deportation of four of the passengers. Juan Denys Hernandez Varenez, a Cuban national, has been charged with four counts of smuggling of humans, a class 3 felony. The San Miguel Sheriff’s Office suspects that he was smuggling four undocumented foreigners to the Denver area when the sedan he was driving crashed. All of the passengers, including a 20-year-old female from Grand Junction whose involvement is unknown,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal agents trying to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border say they're hampered by laws that keep them from driving vehicles on huge swaths of land because it falls under U.S. environmental protection, leaving it to wildlife — and illegal immigrants and smugglers who can walk through the territory undisturbed. A growing number of lawmakers are saying such restrictions have turned wilderness areas into highways for criminals. In recent weeks, three congressional panels, including two in the GOP-controlled House and one in the Democratic-controlled Senate, have moved to give the Border Patrol unfettered access to all federally managed lands...

GENEVA — Swiss customs officials say they intercepted a man at Zurich airport carrying hundreds of endangered spiders in his luggage. Customs officials found 261 Mexican red-kneed tarantulas packed into individual plastic bags inside six boxes belonging to a Swiss man arriving from the Dominican Republic in August.