Free Republic

The Obama administration recognizes that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi “has to reach out to his neighbors,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Thursday in response to queries about Abadi’s meetings with Iran’s top leaders. During his visit to Tehran, Abadi appears to have been accompanied by a man named by the U.S. government during the Iraqi war as responsible for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. […] On the Iranian president’s website, one of the photographs of his meeting with the Iraqi prime minister shows Rouhani greeting a man—apparently a member of the Iraqi delegation—identified by the Foundation for...

EXCLUSIVE: At least five more Iranian nationals were arrested on Monday in addition to the 11 announced by the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday morning. On Monday, 45-year-old Mohammad Hassanpoor was arrested by officers in Baltimore and given a "Third County Notice." He was previously criminally convicted of "assault with a deadly weapon or force likely to produce great bodily injury," where he was sentenced to just under a year behind bars. He was also previously sentenced roughly three months behind bars for "battery: spouse/ex sp/date/etc." and sentenced to two years for stalking. Kaveh Abedi, 45, was arrested in...

MANCHESTER, England — Greater Manchester Police say they have arrested a 23-year-old man in connection with the apparent suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in the city. Police say the man was arrested in south Manchester Tuesday, a day after the explosion killed 22 people and injured 59, many of them teenagers. They did not provide details.

Counter-terrorism police are leading the investigation into an attack on three prison officers by Hashem Abedi, one of the men responsible for the Manchester Arena bombing. The officers sustained life-threatening injuries on Saturday including burns, scalds and stab wounds in the attack at HMP Frankland in County Durham, the Prison Officers' Association said.

The suicide bomber who killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last year had been rescued from the Libyan civil war by the Royal Navy. [snip] It has now emerged that in 2014 Abedi, his brother Hashem and around 100 other British citizens were evacuated from Tripoli by HMS Enterprise as the security situation in Libya deteriorated. They were taken to Malta before returning to the UK. A government spokesman said: "During the deteriorating security situation in Libya in 2014, Border Force officials were deployed to assist with the evacuation of British nationals and their dependants." It...

LONDON (Reuters) - British police have arrested a "large part of the network" behind this week's Manchester suicide bombing but more arrests are likely, the country's top counter-terrorism officer said on Friday. Mark Rowley said "immense" progress had been made in the investigation into Salman Abedi, who killed 22 people, seven of them children, at a pop concert in Manchester on Monday. "They're very significant, these arrests. We're very happy we've got our hands around some of the key players that we are concerned about. But as I say, there is still a little bit more to do," Rowley told...

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business. Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, "poorly managed" and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank's biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter's confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.

Two hooded gunmen opened fire at a man in a kebab restaurant at one of Malmö’s largest shopping centres on Saturday afternoon, in full view of several families and their children. Their victim, thought to be Ashkan Moayed Abedi, a member of the Wolfpack Brotherhood criminal gang, escaped into the carpark where he was then gunned down in front of shocked shoppers. He died later in hospital. “They fired perhaps ten or twelve shots," ... Abedi, 30, was a key player in the gang war which took place in Sweden's third largest city between 2007 and 2011, leaving at least...