Free Republic

A former United States Air Force counterintelligence agent was charged with espionage after she defected to Iran and helped it target her former colleagues, the authorities said. In an extraordinarily detailed indictment made public on Wednesday, prosecutors disclosed that Monica Elfriede Witt, 39, gave the Iranians the code name and mission of a secret Pentagon program involving American intelligence operations. According to the indictment, she was working with members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The elite paramilitary group is known to carry out terrorist operations around the globe and has been sanctioned by the American government.

A former U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist accused of espionage for Iran, Monica Witt, was allegedly radicalized in part during a stint at a George Washington University, which has taken $100 million from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. Certain American universities have received funding from .... Middle Eastern countries. In some cases, the programs have been staffed by academics who are critical of U.S. policy and who publicly espouse fringe positions. Witt was charged Feb. 13 by the Department of Justice with sharing government secrets with Iranian officials. She was allegedly helping create a cyber-hacking operation on fellow former...

PHOENIX, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Muslim leaders in Arizona have drawn increased scrutiny from federal officials in the past year because of a string of suspicious incidents, officials say. Although no one in the state has been accused of supporting terrorists, one Mesa, Ariz., man was charged with lying to the FBI during the terror financing investigation into a Muslim charity accused of funneling money to the Palestinian group Hamas, The Arizona Republic reported Sunday. Also drawing attention to Arizona Muslims was a target-shooting episode in Phoenix that involved a large group of Muslim men and boys firing hundreds of...

An estimated 10, 000 people  have taken part in demonstration in Mashad, Iran, 2nd largest city and one of the holiest cities in Shia Islam. Last week a story broke about Abbas Palizdar, a member of the Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission, who had been speaking about how the mullahs were stealing the people's money and lining their own pockets.   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2029279/posts   He was subsequently arrested. Demonstrations have broken out since his revelations, and arrest.   Video here of demonstration in Mashad, north eastern Iran,  yesterday.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xLW9ZUrxW0&feature=related There were also demonstrations in Tehran yesterday. An Iranian friend reports that...

Arrests, Jailings Of Political And Rights Activists Continue April 14, 2008 Radio Free Europe/RadioLiberty Farangis Najibullah The Iranian authorities this month have added several more names to the list of political activists, human rights campaigners, and journalists who have been imprisoned for voicing dissent. The leader of the unregistered Democratic Party of Iran, Abbas Khorsandi, is among the latest targets of the Iranian security services. Khorsandi was sentenced last week to eight years in prison after being found guilty of threatening Iranian state security by setting up "an illegal political group." A 50-year-old economics professor in the northern town of...

Police have identified the suspect who opened fire at a Walmart store in Amarillo this afternoon as Mohammad Moghaddam, 54. Mohammad Moghaddam, an immigrant, came to Amarillo with his family eight years ago from Iran. Immigrant services from Amarillo would not discuss with reporters whether they helped relocate the family to the Amarillo area. Police say Mohammad was upset he was passed over for a promotion so he took his manager and another person hostage. He was shot dead by police.

("an analyst told CNN." CNN, June 15, 2025 https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-iran-strikes-news-06-15-25) _______ CAMERA Special Report: The National Iranian American Council; Tehran’s Best Friend in Washington. By: Sean Durns November 24, 2015. [...] Parsi’s dissertation on Israeli-Iranian relations served as the basis for his book Treacherous Alliance (2008, Yale University Press). Parsi is a resident alien, with Swedish and Iranian passports, not an American citizen, although he runs an organization that claims to represent Iranian-Americans... Upon coming to the United States in 2001, Parsi worked as a managing director for Hooshang Amirhadmadi of the American Iranian Council (AIC) while completing graduate study. Parsi...

A Dayton man has been federally indicted by a grand jury in Ohio on three counts related to lying on U.S. immigration and naturalization applications by concealing his alleged role as a perpetrator of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Vincent Nzigiyimfura is charged with one count of visa fraud and two counts of attempted naturalization fraud. If convicted, the Rwandan national faces a statutory maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. Nzigiyimfura, also known as Vincent Mfura, 65, of Dayton, is alleged to have participated in the genocide that took place between April and July 1994. It involved members of Rwanda’s...

BAGHDAD — Maj. Gen. Jorge Molina, El Salvadoran Minister of Defense, traveled to Iraq earlier this month to meet with Dr. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraqi National Security Advisor; Mr. Michael Corbin, Senior Political-Military Ministerial Counselor, U.S. Embassy - Iraq; Rear Adm. David Buss, Chief of Strategy, Plans and Assessments for Multi-National Forces – Iraq; and his own Salvadoran forces deployed here. The Minister’s meetings with U.S. Embassy and MNF-I officials focused on gaining perspectives of the Coalition forces mission in Iraq. Molina met with Rubaie to discuss the preliminary invitation letter from the Government of Iraq to the Government of El...

Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the United States Senate, is the latest Republican to back Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Politico learned Sunday. Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he'd donated $500 to the Illinois senator's campaign, cited the Democrat's response to the financial crisis as the primary reason for his decision. "I just got the feeling that Obama will be able to handle this financial crisis better, and I like his financial team of [former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin and [former Federal Reserve...

A California man was charged Monday with operating a ring of illegal test-takers who helped dozens of Middle Eastern nationals obtain U.S. student visas by passing proficiency and college-placement exams for them. Eamonn Daniel Higgins, 46, of Laguna Niguel made an appearance in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud as immigration agents arrested 16 of his suspected clients who remained in Southern California... The allegations revealed a potentially dangerous security breach in the country's student visa system and underscored the vulnerability of a tracking process that relies on schools to verify...

Our next Vice President is a lifelong hunter who fills her freezer and feeds her family with the flesh of hooved mammals that she proudly stalked, killed and field dressed herself. Pictures of her posing next to the violently deceased creatures flood the web and blogospheres. Yet her speechwriter is an animal-rightist and vegan activist whose book was hailed by PETA in 2003 as their "Book of the Year!" And for excellent reasons. In his book, Governor Palin's speechwriter denounces hunters as: "assassins ... miscreants... bullies and cowards taking out their problems on animals." Republican speechwriter Matthew Scully denounces the...

Today is the publication date of the new edition of his book Fugitive Days, and now that the election is over, Ayers has chosen to speak out in his own defense in the pages of a democratic socialist newsweekly, In These Times. By choosing this vehicle, Ayers is skillfully engaging in his own sanitized rewriting of history. His effort is to paint himself as just another honest dissenter, a man whose valiant socialist principles have caused the media to unfairly demonize him as a terrorist. All he did in his memoir, he writes, is to go back to those “exhilarating...

Mexico's leader sees potential in progress of Petrobras Guillermo Najera, a 42-year-old machine operator at Mexican state-controlled oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, gets paid to do nothing all day. Pemex management can't fire the union worker or transfer him from the ammonia plant in Ciudad Camargo, where he still shows up for work even though the plant stopped production in 2002. "We don't have anything else to do except keep our areas clean," Najera says as he and dozens of other idle workers enter the gates of the plant for the 7 a.m. shift. "I want to go back to work."...

The Democratic National Committee’s credentials panel voted Monday to void activist David Hogg’s election to vice chair of the party. Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was elected vice chair in February but has drawn criticism from some Democrats over his plans to spend $20 million to take down long-serving Democratic House lawmakers in primaries. “[It’s] impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote,” Hogg said in a statement after the vote, according to Politico. “The DNC has...

Astonishing news out of Israel today and confirmed by at least one Israeli TV network that Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Gen. Esmail Qaani, commander of the crack Quds Force, is in Jerusalem after being identified as an Israeli intelligence asset.There's no doubt that Qaani was under suspicion. On Sept. 27, 2024, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of the most well-guarded people in the world, was killed when at least 80 bombs were dropped on a bunker in Beirut, where Nasrallah was meeting with top aides. Qaani was placed under house arrest and interrogated, according to Middle East sources. Qaani...

Beirut / Baghdad -- One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn't an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat. He's an Iranian general, and at times he's more influential than all of them. Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani (51) ( pictured) commands the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, an elite paramilitary and espionage organization whose mission is to expand Iran's influence in the Middle East . As Tehran's point man on Iraq , he funnels military and financial support to various Iraqi factions, frustrating U.S. attempts to...

Russian army is embroiled in an embarrassing scandal after 200 of its tanks were found abandoned near a forest in central Russia, unguarded and unlocked. A news website near the city of Yekaterinburg posted a video of the forgotten tanks showing passers-by clambering inside the vehicles and playing with empty ammunition belts. The only items that seemed to be missing were live rounds and the keys to the tanks' ignitions. "There are tanks all over the forest, abandoned," an unnamed reporter on the video says. "If you need one, come and get it." Locals in a nearby village said the...

Lima (AFP) – Peru's opposition-dominated Congress will on Wednesday debate whether to impeach President Pedro Castillo in the third attempt to unseat him since his election a year and a half ago. Castillo, a former school teacher who unexpectedly took power from Peru's traditional political elite, has faced non-stop crises since coming to office, with repeated cabinet reshuffles, multiple corruption investigations and protests against his leadership. The opposition seeks to impeach him for moral incapacity, a constitutional provision that has seen two presidents sacked since 2018.

January 21, 2022 With inflation at a record high, millions of its citizens fleeing the country, and a political opposition recognized by most Western democracies as the legitimate government of Venezuela, the regime of Nicolás Maduro seemed to be on the brink of collapse in 2019. But Maduro regime survived, thanks to a number of factors — among them the external support it received from malign state actors such as Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing never wavered in their political support of the Venezuelan regime, or of Maduro himself, including by refusing to recognize the constitutionally mandated interim presidency...