Free Republic

Al Qaeda confirmed that the US killed its military commander for the "Khorasan," or Afghanistan and Pakistan, in a drone strike in Waziristan in early 2014. Sufyan al Maghribi, a Moroccan who served as the group's military chief in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of many unknown al Qaeda leaders who "work in silence and leave in silence," according to a prominent jihadist who reported his death one year ago. Maghribi was also a contributor to the jihadist group’s Vanguards of Khorasan magazine. Maghribi's death was confirmed in a message released yesterday by al Qaeda that featured Ayman al Zawahiri....

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohammed Jawad is in Afghanistan and will be released into his family's custody today. Jawad was arrested by Afghan police in December 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade into a vehicle containing two U.S. troops and an Afghan interpreter. In July, a judge granted his writ of habeas corpus; Justice Department officials had 22 days to determine whether they would attempt to try Jawad in a criminal court in the U.S. Despite talk of new evidence, ultimately they didn't file any new charges.

*** These are the hideous progressive sounds of Chicago political corruption: The jails are opened as the Cook County Democrats congratulate themselves …. And there is another sound that defines it. “Burn alive B****!” That is what a career violent predator with more than 50 arrests–at least 10 of them for violent felonies–is alleged to have shouted the other night in Chicago after dousing a female ... with gasoline on the Blue Line CTA train and setting her on fire. She is reportedly in critical condition. *** Lawrence Reed, 50, was out on pre-trial release for allegedly knocking a psychiatric...

A high school classmate of mine, an honor roll student and leader back then, long known for her objectivity, sent a compelling letter to a handful of friends. She gave me permission to anonymously reprint her insightful letter, which I slightly modified only for length: Hello friends, 2020 is such an important election year, I want to share my thoughts with people I believe share my concerns about a possible Donald Trump loss.  In November, we will not be choosing between two old men from our traditional parties. It will be a fight between the cornerstone of our democracy –...

A Trump administration official was physically assaulted by a “deranged leftist” inside the United Nations Thursday afternoon during the gathering of the UN General Assembly, Fox News Digital has learned. An official working in international relations for the Department of Health and Human Services was in New York City serving in a support role for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the department’s leadership team at UNGA. “An HHS official was followed into a bathroom, recorded, physically assaulted and verbally accosted by a deranged leftist at the UN who somehow entered the venue past multiple layers of security,” White...

Less than a week before a crash-and-grab burglary crew killed an innocent man on the Magnificent Mile last Thursday, one of the men now charged with that murder donned a “peacekeeper” uniform and posed for a one-on-one picture with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. While that’s troubling, some law enforcement experts are more concerned that the accused man was able to stand directly next to the state’s most powerful executive despite having outstanding warrants in four states. Just before 5 a.m. on September 11, a group of burglars backed a pickup truck into a display window at the Louis Vuitton store...

A shadowy for-profit company and its nonprofit counterpart provide free services to at least 40 far-left prosecutor offices, raising questions about whether it’s working on behalf of taxpayers or of donors who have essentially bought government. The Wren Collective is a shadowy group that emerged from a Cold War-era initiative aimed at promoting Soviet films in the United States. Its current iteration — funded by a former Enron executive and host of other leftist megadonors — claims that America’s “system of policing and mass incarceration is deeply flawed and intractably racist.” The group has intervened on specific criminal cases, written...

Less than three months after his arrest, former UVSC student Kidus Chane Yohannes has been declared mentally competent to stand criminal trial. A 4th District Judge made the decision on Thursday, Sept. 6. A preliminary hearing has been set for Sept. 20. "Yohannes is charged with two felony counts of providing false information for a gun background check and a third felony of possessing a credit card stolen from one of his roommates," said Joe Pyrah, a Daily Herald writer. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, prosecutors requested the competency examination of Yohannes because, as is stated in court documents,...

More personal details are being shared about the woman who was stabbed to death in an apparently random attack on a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina. -snip- While living in the Charlotte area, Ferguson said the college graduate worked at a pizza restaurant, took care of animals, helped at a senior citizen center and rode that same train often. “The first day she was allowed to work, she got a work permit here, she got a job the very first day,” Ferguson described. According to Barnacle, the Ukrainian embassy offered to help bring Zarutska’s body back to the European...

Police launched a massive manhunt Tuesday for a violent sex offender and career criminal sought in the horrific Queens fire that killed the elderly parents of an FDNY paramedic. Jamel McGriff, 42, an ex-con on parole with a string of career busts, has been identified as a suspect in the vicious deaths of 78-year-old Maureen Olton and her husband, Frank Thomas Olton, 76, who was found bound to a pole in the basement with multiple stab wounds after their Bellerose home was torched Monday, police and law enforcement sources said.NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said McGriff is “armed and dangerous” and...

Leftists have long held no qualms about assassination against their rivals, and in Colombia, where narcoterrorism is also a problem and left-narco alliances are common, it has started up again.. But at least we have a secretary of state who is wise to what's going on. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a high-level delegation to Bogota after a leading Colombian presidential candidate, conservative Sen. Miguel Uribe, died of his wounds in a June shooting by a criminal known as a 'sicario' or hitman who obviously had a sponsor. Rubio seems to know who that might be, though,...

A federal grand jury in Washington declined to indict a woman accused of threatening President Donald Trump on social media, another sign of pushback from D.C. residents over the use of federal law enforcement and deployment of National Guard troops in the city. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia accused Nathalie Rose Jones of Indiana of threatening to take the life of the president and transmitting threats over state lines on Instagram and Facebook. Jones allegedly called Trump a “terrorist” and a “Nazi” in a voluntary interview with the Secret Service. She attended a march in Washington...

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag says Washington has told Ankara that jailed Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab -- a gold trader who is awaiting trial in the United States on charges of evading U.S. sanctions against Iran -- is in good medical condition. Bozdag made the remarks on November 16, a day after Turkey announced it had sent a diplomatic note to U.S. authorities inquiring about Zarrab. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons website last week listed Zarrab, 34, as having been released from prison on November 8. But U.S. prosecutors said that posting was an error and he remained...

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to US criminal charges as part of a deal that allows him to go free, according to court documents. Assange, 52, was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information. For years, the US has argued that the Wikileaks files - which disclosed information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - endangered lives. He has spent the last five years in a British prison, from where he has been fighting extradition to the US. According to CBS, the BBC's US partner, Assange will spend no time in US custody and will...

Two weeks ago, Turkish police arrested an Islamist with ties to many upper tier al-Qaida members. The man not only tried to get asylum in Germany, but claims to have known about the London bombings beforehand and to have helped the 9/11 pilots. The Turkish interrogators in Istanbul's high-security prison wanted to be polite; they wanted to show respect for Islam. They offered their prisoner, an Islamist named Luai Sakra, 31, a chance to pray during a pause in questioning. They'd done the same thing with earlier suspects. The move was supposed to establish trust. But this prisoner reacted a...

All detainees had previously attempted illegal border crossings and are now awaiting deportation proceedings.. A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesman confirmed Tuesday that five Iranians were arrested while attempting to illegally cross the U.S. northern border with Canada. "On July 1, Border Patrol Agents from the Champlain, New York Station, responded to suspicious activity near Mooers Forks, NY," CBP's Swanton Sector said on Facebook. "Agents located a minivan occupied by five citizens of Iran and two citizens of Uzbekistan." The Champlain Station is part of the Swanton Sector. Swanton is a rural town in Vermont near Highway 89 just...

The Biden administration has refused to answer reporters’ questions, rule out terrorism, or even reveal the names of two Jordanians in the country illegally, one of whom had illegally crossed the U.S. Southwest border, who on May 3 conducted a box truck ramming attack on Quantico Marine Corps Base.The Department of Justice, Department of Defense, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the FBI all circled wagons to guard even the identities of the two Jordanians against five written congressional inquiries, a sixth by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin seeking government briefings about the incident, and most recently a subpoena by the...

The two Jordanian nationals were previously released on bail. The Biden-Harris administration's Department of Justice has quietly and mysteriously dropped the charges against two Jordanian nationals who allegedly attempted to breach a Virginia military base in May. Hasan Yousef Hamdan and Mohammad Khair Dabous, both in the country illegally, were accused of attempting to enter Quantico Marine Corps Base near Triangle, Virginia, while posing as Amazon delivery drivers, Blaze News previously reported. The two Jordanian nationals were previously released on bail. The Biden-Harris administration's Department of Justice has quietly and mysteriously dropped the charges against two Jordanian nationals who allegedly...

SNIPPET: "Over the past few weeks, in the aftermath of the Anwar al-Awlaki’s rise to mainstream media prominence, I’ve been asked by several journalists to identify and discuss the role of the influential ‘online celebrity shaykhs.’ At the top of my list of Western jihadist clerics has been a guy known as Shaykh Abdullah al-Faisal. Well, turns out, he’s not just at the top of my list. This Jamaican-born fire-breathing jihadist cleric whose spent time in UK prison for incitement to terrorism was just arrested in Mombasa, Kenya for preaching in Kenyan mosques."

During my law enforcement career, I never saw what one might reasonably describe as an obvious act of courage on the part of any attorney, prosecutor, or public defender. Their lives and jobs were insulated from the gritty reality of day-to-day police work. It was a reality they experienced from the comfort of office chairs and argued in climate-controlled, guarded courtrooms. Such was not the case for US Attorney John A Sarcone III of the Northern District of New York on June 17, 2025 in Albany, NY. Graphic: Saul Morales-Garcia. Albany County Sheriff's Office. Public DomainLeaving his office in downtown...