Free Republic

Thanks to a Brazilian-based smuggling network with Mexican guides, Middle Eastern men are being channeled into the United States. Immigration officials identified at least a dozen “Middle Eastern men” sneaking in the country, one with connections to the Taliban. Of course, these are the ones that were caught. No one knows the number that successfully made it into the U.S. The Washington Times reported that some of the special-interest aliens had previously been identified by authorities in other Latin American countries. But these nations never shared their concerns with the United States. Countries south of the border have no interest...

A Gazan fisherman arrested by Israeli security services has revealed how Hamas regularly uses fishermen to smuggle weapons and other military equipment into Gaza. The Shin Bet security service (Israel Security Agency), Israeli navy and Israel Police released for publication Monday afternoon the arrest of 39-year-old fisherman Salim Jamal Hasan Na’aman back in April. Na’aman, a resident of the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, was initially detained by Israeli naval forces after straying beyond the zone permitted for fishing, as part of the Israeli military’s blockade aimed at containing the Hamas terrorist group. Under Shin Bet interrogation, the...

Henrico Co. cigarette bust: More than $10 million funneled into smuggling operation By Kristin Smith Published: May 4, 2016, 5:46 pm Updated: May 5, 2016, 6:32 pm HENRICO, Va. (WRIC)–New details are emerging about a massive bust in Henrico County. 8News broke the story earlier this week.Police shut down a multi-million dollar cigarette trafficking ring that was operating out of Henrico County. The court documents on the case read like a movie script.Details of the nearly two-year investigation involve confidential informants, GPS tracking devices and lots undercover surveillance.According to a search warrant affidavit, the masterminds behind the operation spent...

The Danish government is charging hundreds of its citizens with human smuggling for giving rides to refugees, the Washington Post reports. Denmark has been aggressively combating the wave of migrants from Germany. The government strongly reduced the benefits it provides, migrants are banned from public transportation, and authorities often confiscate their possessions. Denmark even placed ads in Lebanese newspapers, warning people against coming to the Scandinavian country. At the same time, Danish citizens who take migrants to the Swedish border are arrested for human trafficking. While the government is primarily based around the center-right, the strongly anti-immigrant Danish People's Party...

A.J. Strata informs us that Sidney Blumenthal has leaked the fact that NSA is assisting Israel in tracking weapons shipments from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, gaining him anti-Israel supporters and (one hopes) a chance to talk to the grand jury investigating NSA leaks: Why would Sydney Blumenthal risk everything to publicize the fact he has been leaked – and is publicizing – classified information? The leftwing, anti-Israel sites are lapping this up. But my guess is Sidney just won himself an invite to a Grand Jury looking into leaks at the NSA:

A very unusual case of smuggling took place on Thursday, as huge quantities of gold, steroids and smart phones were found in the car of a European Union (EU) representative in Israel, as he drove into the country from Jordan. Dozens of kilograms of gold, hundreds of smartphones and a full package of steroid drugs were discovered by customs inspectors in the car as it tried to pass through the Allenby Border Crossing from Jordan, reports Channel 2. The EU diplomat was detained and later released, and his driver - an Arab resident of the northern Atarot neighborhood of Jerusalem...

North Korean diplomat expelled from SA for rhino horn trafficking 2015-12-23 14:43 Julian Rademeyer, News24 Correspondent Pretoria - A high-ranking North Korean diplomat accused of abusing his diplomatic immunity and his embassy's diplomatic bag to smuggle rhino horn out of South Africa has been expelled from the country. News24 has learnt that Park Chol-jun - also identified in some news reports as Pak Chol Chun - quietly left the country on December 11. A spokesperson for the Department of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco), Nelson Kgwete, did not name Park, but confirmed on Tuesday that the department had been "informed...

Earlier this week, we told a fascinating story about an unprecedented, multi-year smuggling ring involving Turkey, Iran, and Dubai (as well as China, Russia and countless other nations) which saw corruption reaching to the very top of the political and financial establishment: from president Erdogan in Turkey, to one of Turkey's richest people, Iran-born Riza Sarraf, to Sheikh Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, the son of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and one of the world's richest people. The smuggled object in question was gold, billions of dollars worth of gold. The focus of the story was the previously unknown...

The security guards of the Defense Ministry's Transfer Authority and the Civil Administration's David division stopped a truck traveling from Hevron to Gaza at the Turkarmiya checkpoint Monday, after it noted it was shipping soybean oil. [...] The shipment was sent to a lab for testing, where it became clear the "soybean oil" was TDI - turbocharged direct injection - material, the fuel primarily used for rockets and diesel engines. ...

<p>Legally, alcohol is banned in Saudi Arabia. In reality, however, there are people in the country who drink.</p> <p>If you're wondering how exactly they actually get that alcohol, consider the multiple reports in the Saudi press today that describe how the Saudi authorities at border with United Arab Emirates caught a man with 48,000 cans of Heineken – all disguised as Pepsi cola.</p>

Egypt's pumping of salt water from the nearby Mediterranean into the tunnels is not only creating a mess as it rises to the surface. Palestinian officials say it is also contaminating water supplies as well as threatening to wreck farmland and spread disease. Local residents say that at the peak of the tunnel business, after Hamas Islamists seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 and Israel tightened a closure of its crossings into the enclave, nearly 2,500 underground passages snaked under the border with Egypt. The direction of traffic was mainly into Gaza. Commercial goods - and weapons smuggled in separate...

All content is in video God Bless

A Watauga man has been indicted by a federal grand jury, accused of smuggling undocumented immigrants into Texas for financial gain, according to the Department of Justice. On Sept. 18, deputies with the Frio County Sheriff's Department and agents with the U.S. Border Patrol responded to a 911 call from someone who said they saw several people exiting a tractor-trailer parked at a convenience store in Frio County, southwest of San Antonio. When authorities arrived, they found 39 undocumented immigrants, including 28 men, seven women and four children, from Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, officials said. "We see hands sticking...

**SNIP** As early as November 2012, an FBI wiretap request noted that the investigation team’s leader had concerns about the agent. But according to the filing, an FBI “review has not resulted in any formal findings or determinations regarding the credibility of [the agent].” In early 2013, according to the filing, the agent was no longer involved in the case, but there is no clear explanation as to why. Still, the filing said there was a “series of outrageous behavior” on the part of the agent that might explain why he was removed. That behavior included arranging $20,000 or more...

John Kerry has assembled a three-person team to lead the State Department’s efforts against ISIS. Two of the members — Gen. John Allen and Brett McGurk — seem unobjectionable. The third, Anne Patterson, is another matter. In announcing her central role, Kerry praised Patterson as “one of our nation’s top diplomats deeply respected in the region.” But Patterson is not respected in Egypt, where she served as ambassador during the period when the Muslim Brotherhood was in power. Bridget Johnson at PJ Media reminds us that Patterson stood firmly behind the Brotherhood as it persecuted opponents and attempted to consolidate...

Kenyan police said security agents on Thursday discovered firearms and drugs on the Norwegian-flagged Hoegh Transporter, which is docked at the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa. Coastguards and navies in East Africa have struggled to stem the flow of drugs through their waters as the region has become a key export route for Afghan heroin destined for Europe. Hoegh Autoliners confirmed weapons were found inside some of the vehicles on its vessel, which was carrying a consignment from Mumbai to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, MONUSCO. ... "The weapons were not declared to us at...

It is one of the more unusual sort of contraband discovered by customs officers at Malaga airport when they conducted a routine suitcase search. Two kilos of dried seahorses were found hidden within luggage of traveller arriving from Colombia. The Civil Guard said the seahorses had been discovered within plastic bags hidden inside the suitcase of a Chinese traveller arriving at Malaga Costa del Sol airport from Cali in Columbia. "They were discovered during a manual inspection of the luggage belonging to a passenger arriving in Malaga from Cali via Amsterdam," the Civil Guard said in a statement on Friday....

N Korean ship 'linked to Israel's strike on Syria' By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem Last Updated: 4:52pm BST 17/09/2007 A suspicious North Korean freighter that re-flagged itself as South Korean before off-loading an unknown cargo at the Syrian port of Tartous is at the centre of efforts today to investigate Israel's recent airstrike on Syria. Israel has not given any details on the operation in Syria An Israeli on-line data analyst, Ronen Solomon, found an internet trace for the 1,700-tonne cargo ship, Al Hamed, which showed the vessel started to off-load what Syrian officials categorised as "cement" on Sept 3....

Federal authorities have seized a private airplane full of illegal immigrants. The aircraft was being used in an attempt to smuggle seven illegal immigrants from the Texas border into the interior U.S. to avoid immigration checkpoints. The arrests of the seven illegal immigrants and seizure of the airplane took place on Sunday morning following a routine inspection at the McAllen Miller International airport, information released by the Air and Marine branch of U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealed.It was during that inspection that authorities found the illegal immigrants hiding inside a Beech King Air E90 aircraft. The airplane’s pilot, a...

Fifteen people were arrested this month in Spain for smuggling Moroccan migrants into the country on water scooters, authorities said on Saturday, terming it a "very dangerous practice." The revelation came as Europe's migrant crisis snowballed with Austrian police rescuing a group of dehydrated migrants found in a truck, days after the bodies of 71 migrants, believed to be Syrian, were found in an abandoned former poultry lorry. "In August, 15 people were arrested for bringing Moroccan migrants to Spanish shores," the Guardia Civil, a paramilitary police force, said in a statement without specifying the nationality of those held. In...