Free Republic

A cab driver who was accused of kidnapping a female passenger in Chicago and then sexually assaulting her pleaded guilty this week to one count of criminal sexual abuse causing bodily harm in exchange for a sentence of two years of probation, according to court records. Prosecutors dropped five Class X felony charges in their deal with Tarek Masri, including multiple counts of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Masri, now 59, was arrested at his Joliet home in 2018 after DNA material generated a hit in the sexual assault, which occurred three years earlier, police said. Early on...

Step one: Find an expert with an impressive-sounding academic title to legitimize shoddy advocacy propaganda. Meet Brian Levin. He's the one-man band behind something called the "Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism" at California State University, San Bernardino. The "center" (that is: Levin) claims to be "nonpartisan" and "objective." But he is a former top staffer of the militant, conservative-smearing Southern Poverty Law Center, which was forced to apologize earlier this year after including famed black neurosurgeon and GOP 2016 candidate Ben Carson on its "extremist watch list" of hate groups. At SPLC, Levin infamously posited that the...

FBI: Terror suspect plotted fuel attackAl-Marabh planned to blow up tunnelJail informant reported `martyr' bid JOHN SOLOMONASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - Nabil al-Marabh, who ran a print shop with his uncle in Toronto, plotted to steal a fuel tanker truck and blow it up in one of the heavily travelled tunnels between New Jersey and Manhattan, FBI documents allege. Al-Marabh, 36, was arrested Sept. 19, 2001, in Chicago in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. His arrest prompted an RCMP raid of his uncle's copy shop on Charles St. in Toronto. The U.S. deported him...

Here’s a bit of Labor Day irony. The man who led the historic 2005 bus and subway strike—which forced millions of commuters to squeeze into packed cabs, pedal bicycles they hadn’t used for years and hike to work like intrepid Boy Scouts—is now a licensed cab driver. Roger Toussaint, the fiery former president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, got his permit in December to drive a taxi in Cobb County, Ga., where he now lives, records show. “Driving a cab is a dignified profession,” Toussaint, 55, said during a telephone interview last week. …

Those convicted Friday include 40-year-old Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, who prosecutors said used his connections as a popular imam at a mosque in San Diego's City Heights neighborhood to raise money for the group. The other defendants were two San Diego taxi drivers, 36-year-old Basaaly Saeed Moalin and 56-year-old Issa Doreh, and 37-year-old Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud of Anaheim, whose financial transfer business Shidaal Express was used to route the money, prosecutors said. Government attorneys played tapes of telephone calls, many of them between Moalin and the late Aden Hashi Ayrow, who was among the top leaders of al-Shabaab until he...

25 injured when taxi plows into crowd leaving Gaslamp club By Susan Shroder Originally published February 12, 2011 at 5:22 a.m., updated February 12, 2011 at 6:27 a.m. An injured woman on the street. An injured woman on the street. If you witnessed this incident, give our breaking news team a call at 619-293-1010. An injured woman on the street. Photos courtesy Maurice Luque, San Diego Fire-Rescue Department The taxi outside Stingaree nightclub. SAN DIEGO — Twenty-five people were injured early Saturday, six critically, when a taxi driver veered off a busy street onto a sidewalk and plowed into patrons...

Wilmington, Delaware (CNN) -- Police have found homicide victim John Wheeler's cell phone, according to a taxi driver who was interviewed by investigators this week. Athel Scott told CNN National Correspondent Susan Candiotti that police told him they found the cab driver's number in the phone of Wheeler, the former Pentagon official who was found dead in a Delaware landfill. He said investigators wanted to know how his number got there. Scott... says he told the police he didn't have any idea. "I never got a call from the man. I don't know him... He's never been in my cab....

The search continued Wednesday for a man accused of murdering his two teenage daughters and leaving their bodies in his taxi cab. The Denton County Sheriff's SWAT team had surrounded a Lewisville home for hours Wednesday in search of Yaser Abdel Said, a 50-year-old cab driver, police said. Authorities entered the house about 4 p.m. to find it empty. The bodies of Sarah Yaser Said, 17, and her sister Amina Yaser Said, 18, were found Tuesday evening in Irving inside a Jet Taxi vehicle that Mr. Said drove, Irving police spokesman David Tull said.

Times Square Is Evacuated in Bomb Scare The scene at Times Square on Saturday night after police found a suspicious package inside a Pathfinder on West 45th Street. RAY RIVERA and KARIN HENRY May 1, 2010 A bomb in Times Square led to the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers from the area on a warm and busy Saturday evening, the police said. There was no explosion. “It appears to be a car bomb left in a Pathfinder between Seventh and Eighth,” said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. The device, he said, contained “explosive...

Police say a car bomb has exploded outside a British Army barracks in Northern Ireland. The blast was behind Palace Barracks in Holywood, Belfast, at 12.24am and is described as "ongoing". Reporting from the scene, Sky's Ireland correspondent Vicky Hawthorne said: "Police are not confirming this but there are unconfirmed reports of some injuries on the ground.

A Chicago taxi driver who is a Pakistani native was arrested today on charges he provided material support to Al Qaeda by attempting to send money overseas, federal authorities said. Raja Lahrasib Khan, 56, claimed to be an acquaintance of terror leaders in Pakistan, authorities said. He is due in federal court in Chicago later this afternoon. Khan was arrested without incident this morning in downtown Chicago while working, authorities said.

AN Indian student and part-time taxi driver who was bashed in his cab in Brisbane early yesterday does not know whether he can carry on in Australia. As he nursed his wounds, including cuts to his face and a swollen right eye, Sandeep Goyal, 20, said he was considering abandoning his business management studies to return to his home state of Punjab in northern India. His alleged attackers, a pair of brothers, appeared briefly in Brisbane Magistrates Court yesterday. Brett Anthony Gill, 28, and Joshua Philip Colin Gill, 25, have been charged with assault occasioning bodily harm while armed, with...

SNIPPET: "...let's get back to the woeful tale of Bro. Ismail Royer, as presented at the Umar Lee blog:" SNIPPET: "Mr. Royer, formerly associated with CAIR, is currently serving a 20 year sentence for his work on behalf of designated Terrorist group Lashkar e Taiba. Lashkar e Taiba is notable among other things for having killed 171 people in Mumbai in 2008, among many other atrocities."

It was the holy time, so I had to grope the lady SNIPPET: "He was yesterday found guilty of the aggravated indecent assault of a 23-year-old woman who suffers cerebral palsy and epilepsy." SNIPPET: "Magistrate Jennifer Betts said Qazizada claimed he was a devout Muslim who was fasting when the attack occurred in September last year. " 'Men don't even touch their wives (during Ramadan)', were his words," Ms Betts said in Ryde Local Court." SNIPPET: "As she struggled to get out of his taxi, Qazizada squeezed the woman's breasts several times. Throughout the assault, he asked the woman: "Are...

<p>An overzealous cabby allegedly booted a gay couple when he spotted the duo sharing a warm embrace in the back of his cold car.</p> <p>Paul Bruno and his partner hailed the yellow cab Monday night at 13th Street and First Avenue and sat close, Bruno told The Post.</p>

BULLETIN -- NEW YORK POLICE AND FBI RAID HOMES IN QUEENS IN TERRORISM INVESTIGATION.6 minutes ago from BNO Headquarters

Three men have been jailed for an arson attack at the home of a publisher days before his novel about the Prophet Mohammed was due to be published. Martin Rynja's home in Lonsdale Square, Islington, north London, was targeted on 27 September last year. Abbas Taj, 30, Ali Beheshti, 41, and Abrar Mirza, 23, from east London, were each jailed for four-and-a-half years. They were convicted of conspiracy to commit arson, being reckless as to whether life was endangered. The attack took place as the Jewel of Medina, a novel about the Prophet's child bride A'isha, was to be published...

January 23, 2009 The site, www.revolutionmuslim.com which featured the threat is run by Yousef Al-Khattab, a New York City cab driver who operates the extremist Islamic anti-American Web site that features violent images on a daily basis: From the Statue of Liberty, with an ax blade cutting through her side; to a video mocking the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, entitled “Daniel Pearl I am Happy Your Dead “; or the latest speech from Sheikh Abdullah Faisal, an extremist Muslim cleric convicted in the UK and later deported for soliciting the murder of non-Muslims. The latest - a cartoon-like...

A look at the Fort Dix suspects By INQUIRER STAFF A closer look at the men charged with plotting to attack Fort Dix. The information was provided by the U.S. Department of Justice: • Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22, of Cherry Hill. He was born in Jordan, is a U.S. citizen, and is employed as a taxicab driver in Philadelphia. • Eljvir Duka, 23, of Cherry Hill, also goes by "Elvis Duka" and "Sulayman," was born in the former Yugoslavia. Duka is illegally residing in the United States and operates businesses known as Qadr. Inc., Colonial Roofing and National Roofing, all...

Detention transformed doctor into man of peace Saudi carries no bitterness home as he ends San Antonio stay 05/25/2002 By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News SAN ANTONIO - Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi sits easily on the carpeted floor of the mosque. He speaks with a soft intensity, the words spilling out as he describes the day his life was turned upside down. Stony-faced FBI agents whisked him from his San Antonio home a day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was flown to New York and secreted in a detention cell for nearly two weeks. Like hundreds...