Free Republic

Mansour Osanlou, the leader of Tehran's municipal bus service union, was reportedly assaulted by an inmate in an Iranian prison, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports. The trade unionist was not injured in the attack, which occurred at Gohardasht prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, on February 22. Osanlou was arrested in July 2007 after being abducted on the street by security forces. He is serving a five-year prison term for what authorities say was acting against "national security." He had been detained several times between 2005-2007. Canadian-based labor activist Mehdi Kouhestaninejad told RFE/RL that Osanlou has been persecuted in prison by...

<p>A dissident Iranian labour leader who is serving a five-year jail sentence has been hospitalised with a heart problem, a source close to him said yesterday. Mansoor Osanloo, leader of a union grouping bus drivers, was detained in July last year for "distributing statements against the system" and a judiciary official was in October quoted as saying he had been sentenced to jail.</p>

Ayatollahs’ Lobby In Washington Offering Human Rights as a Negotiating Item By Hassan Daioleslam Binding accountability for Iran’s suppression of its population to nuclear issues and Iran’s meddling in Iraq amounts to doing the bidding of the ruling ayatollahs. The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its president Trita Parsi have organized a panel in the US House of Representatives on July 26th, 2007, titled “Human Rights in Iran and US Foreign Policy Options.”1 According to the published agenda, representatives from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will participate. The sponsors of the program (NIAC and Trita Parsi) are key...

On the grimy walls of the Ivanovo Machine Tools Factory, a declining Soviet behemoth once venerated as a model of Socialist efficiency, hangs a solitary display of safety guidelines. In a series of fading illustrations, it instructs workers how to behave in the event of a Nato nuclear attack: don your gas masks, head for the nearest shelter and dispatch messengers on horseback to warn outlying villages. Sergei Ivanov, the visiting joint first deputy prime minister of Russia, might not have seen the posters as he strode on to the factory floor, in Ivanovo, a gloomy city 220 miles north...

Hillary and her campaign continue to try to hold Obama and his campaign to a higher set of standards than they're willing to adhere to. Apparently Hillary and her people can mock and deride Obama all they want to. And what about Hillary's Machiavelian [sic] response to "60-Minutes" Steve Croft's question to her about whether or not she believed Obama was a Muslim? She knows very well he is a Christian. So she could have clearly and finally put an end to the untrue rumor with an unequivocol "No, there's no truth to that rumor". But she purposely chose...

Daniel Joseph Maldonado, a former Houston resident who convereted to Islam and admitted training with terrorists, was sentenced today to 10 years in prison and given a $1,000 fine. Maldonado, 28, pleaded guilty in April to training with al-Qaida in East Africa. He is the first American charged with joining the terrorist organization in Somalia. The charge carried a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and a fine up to $250,000. He admitted his association with terrorists in exchange for no further prosecution by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston. Maldonado came to the attention of federal investigators in late...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda. Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that...

Best-selling author Robert "Buzz" Patterson isn't subtle when it comes to titles. The first book by the talk-radio host, a retired Air Force colonel and one-time White House military aide, was "Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America's National Security." This week sees the release of "War Crimes: The Left's Campaign to Destroy Our Military and Lose the War on Terror." That lack of subtlety continues inside: "At their nation's time of need in this global ideological battle, the American Left has climbed into bed with our enemies," he writes. "They demoralize our brave men...

"..To many in the anti-Iraq war movement, the liberal opposition to the bill was as maddening as it was mystifying. ?You really have two options here: One is that you can vote for a change of course here and say we?re going to find a way out of Iraq, or, two, you can vote against it and hand George Bush a victory,? said Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and co-founder of the anti-Iraq war VoteVets.org . ?It doesn?t make sense to me. George Bush got us into the war. They have challenged him on everything. Why would they give...

Lawyers for billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein once claimed he co-founded the Clinton Foundation as they touted his relationship with the former president during plea negotiations. In an attempt to boost Epstein's image before he was sentenced for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution in 2008, his attorneys tried to emphasize his close ties with Bill Clinton, Fox News reports. A July 2007 letter to the South Florida State U.S. Attorney's office, written by lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Gerald Lefcourt, claimed that Epstein had been part of the original group that set up the Foundation's Clinton Global Initiative, focusing on...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani cleric holed up in an Islamabad mosque said on Thursday he and his student followers were willing to surrender, after three days of violence in which 19 people have died. But authorities rejected his offer, saying his attempt to attach conditions was unacceptable and insisting he release women and children human shields. Violence erupted outside the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, in the capital on Tuesday after a months-long stand-off between the authorities and the Taliban-supporting clerics and their thousands of followers, some of them armed. There were intermittent clashes and several loud explosions through...

The bullet-riddled walls and roofs of the Red Mosque's interior tell the story of a fierce battle. The mosque, located in a central district of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, was stormed by troops two days ago to clear out Islamic militants holed up inside. The government says 10 soldiers, one policeman and 75 militants were killed in the fighting and the week-long standoff that preceded the final assault. For six months, the halls and rooms of Jamia Hafsa, a women's seminary inside the mosque, were home to a new breed of Islamic hardliners - women clad from head to toe...

SNIPPET: "The Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) name has come up before in connection with terrorism plots, including the October 2002 Portland Seven and the September 2002 Lackawanna Six cases in the United States, as well as the August 2006 plot to bomb airliners en route from London to the United States, the July 7, 2005, London Underground bombings and the July 2007 attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland. Over the past several years we also have received several queries about TJ from U.S. law enforcement officials who are concerned about the group’s presence and activities in the United States. U.S....

Ten police dead in Pakistan blast July 6, 2008 At least 10 policemen have been killed in an apparent suicide bomb attack in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, officials have said. The attack came on the first anniversary of a deadly siege at the city's Red Mosque, in which more than 100 people were killed during fighting. The mosque was stormed by Pakistani troops to evict militants who had taken sanctuary within its complex. Police had been deployed at a rally being held near the mosque on Sunday. "The blast happened 15 minutes after the meeting dispersed. A heavy contingent of...

via translation - Thousands of Islamists commemorate the storming of the Red Mosque Thousands of Islamist radicals gathered in Islamabad to celebrate the first anniversary of the bloody storming of the Red Mosque. The capital of Pakistan is placed under high surveillance. Many demonstrators deemed close to the Taliban and Al Qaeda brandissaient black flags and slogans scandaient paying tribute to the "martyrs" of the headquarters of the Red Mosque. The police established a security perimeter around the mosque, inaccessible by car, with son barbed wire and search pedestrians in the search for possible weapons. "We demand to act against...

Like some secretive, sinister army they march on their target. With only eyes visible behind black burkhas, scores of women wielding bamboo poles descend on a police checkpoint in the Pakistan capital of Islamabad. Backed by armed male students, they snatched weapons and took four officials hostage, triggering a gun battle that left at least nine people dead and 140 wounded. As the bullets flew, many of the women took to rooftops to shout anti- Government slogans. Students set fire to two government offices and torched dozens of cars outside. There were even loudspeaker calls for suicide attacks on the...

SAIMA KHAN wants to die a martyr. Life is transient, she told her father in a telephone call last week, and the real glory is to sacrifice it for Allah. Her statement would be alarming at any age, but Saima is only 10. As she spoke, rifle shots rang out, the acrid smell of tear gas drifted over Islamabad and hundreds of troops surrounded the pro-Taliban Red Mosque, a religious school complex in the heart of Pakistan’s capital where Saima was among hundreds of children being held as virtual hostages in a stand-off between militants and the government. Saima and...

Islamic militants in Pak. set afire offices of aid agencies Karachi, July 10 (PTI): Enraged Islamic militants set on fire offices of two international aid agencies working in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province today in retaliation to the military action against militants in the Lal Masjid. Local residents said that around 100 people, some of them armed, had come down from villages in the mountains surrounding Batgram town near Mansehra and attacked the offices of 'Care International' and the 'French Red Cross' and set the big tents on fire. The aid agencies were working in the area for the survivors...

ISLAMABAD: Eight “high value terrorists” wanted by Pakistan and other countries are holed up inside Lal Masjid, while another was killed by security forces in the ongoing operation, Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq said on Sunday. “Nine suspected terrorists said to be far more dangerous and harmful than Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives were hiding inside the mosque compound,” Haq told a press conference here. Haq said that the militants and not Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Lal Masjid’s deputy chief cleric, were controlling the mosque. “The militants are holding children and Ghazi hostage,” he said. He said that about 500 male...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A radical cleric whose besieged mosque sought to impose strict Islamic morality on the Pakistani capital was killed Tuesday after refusing to respond to troops who demanded his surrender, officials said. About 50 militants and eight soldiers died when the military stormed the sprawling Red Mosque compound. Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the public face of the pro-Taliban mosque that challenged the government's writ in Islamabad, had vowed to die rather than give himself up. An army official said Ghazi had received bullet wounds and when he was told to surrender, he gave no reply. Commandos then fired another...