Free Republic

Six men suspected of killing Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio have been killed in prison. The prison authority in Ecuador reported this in a statement. Ecuadorian President Lasso writes on... Drug violence Villavicencio was shot dead in the capital Quito in August after speaking at a campaign rally, two weeks before the elections. The gunman was killed in a shootout after the attack. Shortly after Villavicencio's murder, six Colombians were arrested. They were linked to the Los Lobos drug gang. It is not clear whether these are also the six suspects who have now been killed. Villavicencio's death shocked the...

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, has a new project. ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand. The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million...

BOGOTA, Colombia - President Bush was targeted for assassination by Colombia's biggest Marxist rebel group this week when he visited the Caribbean port city of Cartagena, a top Colombian official said Saturday. "According to informants and various sources, we had information indicating that various members of the FARC had been instructed by their leaders to make an attempt against President Bush," Defense Secretary Jorge Alberto Uribe told reporters. He would not reveal details of the threat. The Secret Service, which protects the president, said it "does not comment or release information regarding our protective intelligence and protective methods." "We do...

Illegals Face a Gauntlet of Doom: The Border Patrol Faces Dopers, Terrorists, and the Desperate Victims of Coyotes. The 2,100 mile southern border of the U.S., with its treacherous mountain ranges, canyons, rivers and deserts, has become an uncontrollable stretch of violence, death, rape and exploitation. Over a decade ago, SOF rode with Border Patrol Agents in Arizona when the situation already seemed out of hand. One of those agents, now retired, recently contacted SOF with a disturbing and frustrated update, reflecting the deterioration of the Mexico-United States border. "In my career, spanning three decades, many of my friends and...