Free Republic

WASHINGTON - When Cuba faced the U.S. in a World Cup qualifier last night, it did so without midfielder Pedro Faife and forward Reynier Alcantara - who both presumably joined the growing legion of that country's soccer-playing defectors to America. Cuba's coach, Reinhold Fanz, first confirmed their disappearance from the team's Doubletree Hotel during their stays here this week. Neither one was at practice on Friday, or at the stadium last night for the match at RFK Stadium. "We have security, but you can't handcuff them to their rooms," Fanz told the Washington Post on Friday night. Together, the two...

UNITED NATIONS - A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam's regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program — and allow Russia to skim profits. Tretyakov, former deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly to code names. Among the spies...

Sending Out Signals to Long-Isolated North Koreans Defectors Who Once Worked for Government of Kim Jong Il Now Broadcast From South of the DMZ By Francine Uenuma washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Sunday, December 30, 2007; A27 SEOUL -- Trained as a military propagandist in North Korea, Kim Seong Min has turned his skills against the government that once forced his allegiance. From a small radio studio in Seoul, he and a handful of other North Korean defectors deliver daily broadcasts to people who remain behind in the isolated communist state run by Kim Jong Il. "To give food provisions, if the...

Iranian former deputy defense minister Ali Rheze Asgari supplied intelligence sources in the West with information regarding the sites that Israeli jets allegedly attacked on September 6, the Kuweiti Al Jareeda reported Friday. Asgari defected from Iran several months ago and moved to an undisclosed location in the West. In related news, the Saudi paper Al Watan reported Friday that American jets were hovering in Iraqi airspace close to the Syrian border during the raid. Reportedly, the USAF jets were meant to give aerial backup to Israel in case IAF warplanes would come to any harm.

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba is considering pulling out of the amateur World Boxing Championships in Chicago in October to avoid new defections by its boxers, Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Wednesday. "Imagine all the sharks of the Mafia wanting fresh meat," the convalescing 80-year-old Castro wrote in a column published on the front page of the Communist Party newspaper Granma. "I must tell them: we are not keen on delivering it to their doorstep," Castro said, commenting on an attempt by German boxing promoters to hire two of Cuba's top fighters during the Pan-American Games in Brazil last month....

Cuban athletes leave games early By Gary Duffy BBC News, Brazil At the 1999 Pan-American Games in Canada some 13 athletes defected Cuban athletes have made a hurried departure from the Pan-American games in Brazil, apparently amid fears of possible mass defections. The delegation was rushed at short notice to Rio de Janeiro's airport, leaving the men's volleyball team no time to collect their bronze medals. The athletes were said to have been ordered to leave the games before the finishing ceremony on Sunday.

In recent days, intelligence circles in Tehran have been awash with rumors of a second high-level defection to the Americans of a Revolutionary Guards intelligence officer, Brig. Gen. Seyed Mohammad Soltani. Gen. Soltani is a career intelligence officer, who took over as head of the Persian Gulf bureau of Rev. Guards intelligence in October 2006. On February 8 – just one day after Gen Asgari disappeared in Istanbul – Gen. Soltani traveled to Bandar Abbas [Iran’s largest port, home to the Revolutionary Guard’s largest naval base], where he was scheduled to inspect an intelligence listening post. Instead, he vanished… So...

With Cash, Defectors Find North Korea’s Cracks Richard Humphries/Polaris, for The New York Times A MOTHER’S DETERMINATION Kim Myung-shim, above, fled North Korea in 2003 and then helped her three children escape. The last to flee, Lee Chun-hak, is now in an immigration detention center in Bangkok, where his mother visited him. She said she paid $3,600 to aid his escape from the North. By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: October 19, 2006 BANGKOK — Last March, Lee Chun-hak, a 19-year-old North Korean, went to the Chinese border to meet with a North Korean money trafficker. Using the trafficker’s Chinese cellphone, Mr....

ANSEONG, South Korea — On a sprawling campus hidden in farmland here, about 300 North Koreans are learning that, no, actually, it was not the South that started the Korean War. And, yes, America is an ally, their re-education goes, before broaching the A B C's of capitalism, human rights and democracy. Field trips focus on how to apply for a job or use an automated teller machine. Women are shown the finer points of home decorating; men, the basic skills to fix the home boiler. Soon after landing in South Korea, all North Korean defectors come here to the...

/begin my translation N. Korea: Armed Men Attack N. Korea's Tumen Border  It is revealed that, just before the Lunar New Year's Day, multiple (armed) attacks on border guard by unidentified men occurred along N. Korea's northern border area. Especially, indications are that some of attackers were carrying automatic weapons and their movements are well-coordinated, leading us to wonder about their background. Multiple Attacks: According to the sources on N. Korea, on the evening of Jan. 28, a border guard at Namyang Worker's District, Onsung County, N. Hamkyong Province, spotted a few men crossing Tumen River from Kai-san-tun area of China, and attempted to arrest...

Seven Ethiopian soldiers who defected to Eritrea while in Israel were flown to Eritrea Wednesday night by the Eritrean ambassador. Tensions are high between the two neighboring African countries, which fought a border war in the late 1990s. The officers had come to Israel to learn how to use military equipment Ethiopia had purchased from a private defense company in Israel, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev. Eritrea's ambassador to Israel Tesfamariam Tekeste told Israel Radio that the soldiers had arrived at his home this week asking for asylum. A number of them wanted to reunite with family members living...

ESPN.com: Baseball Thursday, November 24, 2005 Updated: November 25, 2:06 PM ET Castro criticizes Cuban baseball player defectors Associated Press HAVANA -- President Fidel Castro criticized Cuban baseball players who have left the country for multimillion-dollar contracts in the major leagues, saying the island always finds better players to replace them. During a five-hour appearance on state television Wednesday, Castro remarked on those players "who cannot resist the millions of the major leagues" and acknowledged that baseball "is the sport in which we have been beaten the most" when it comes to defections. Still, the 79-year-old leader insisted Cuban baseball...

U.S. Draft Bill to Punish China for Deporting N.Koreans With China’s deportation of North Korean defectors to their Stalinist homeland looming like a black cloud over Seoul-Beijing ties, some U.S. lawmakers and activists are drawing up a bill to impose trade sanctions on China unless it stops the practice. Washington has warned Beijing of punitive measures if it continues to deport North Korean refugees but has so far taken no legislative action. Activists including the Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees hold a press conference urging Bejing to stop repatriating North Korean defectors, in front...

Dear Mr. President, Many in America, Australia, and especially Communist China have been following the story of Chen Yonglin, the former political consul for the Communist regime now in fear for his life for his willingness to expose that regime's network of overseas spies. Chen has already contacted our consulate for help and safety. I ask you to grant Chen Yonglin, his fellow defector Hao Fengjun, and their families in Australia political asylum in the United States. Chen and Hao have bravely revealed to Australia how Communist China keeps tabs on its exiles abroad, especially its exiled dissidents. To allow...

Canberra's bumbling in its handling of Chinese diplomatic defector Chen Yonglin is a direct result of a lack of clarity, realism and forthrightness in the Federal Government's China policy. Prime Minister John Howard recognises, correctly, that China will be vitally important to Australia over the next half century, and has, rightly, done all he can to assiduously cultivate good relations with that country. But the Government has naively thought it possible to dodge having to deal with the more unsavoury nature of what, despite some progress on human rights, is still a politically repressive regime. In pursuing the relationship, the...

Third Chinese defector turns up in Australia Thu Jun 9, 7:33 PM ET SYDNEY (AFP) - A third Chinese official has defected in Australia and already been granted refugee status after revealing he witnessed a dissident being tortured to death in China, his lawyer said. The unnamed official was a senior officer in a branch of the Chinese security service known as "610" and defected after witnessing repeated human rights abuses by other agents, lawyer Bernard Collaery said on ABC television late Thursday. Collaery, a prominent lawyer and former attorney-general of the Australian Capital Territory, said the official's assertions backed...

Australians rally in support of Chinese defectors Sat Jun 11, 2005 12:52 AM ET SYDNEY (Reuters) - Protesters rallied in several Australian cities on Saturday urging the government to grant political asylum to a Chinese diplomat who is in hiding saying he fears for his safety and that of his family if returned to China. Chen Yonglin, 37, has formally applied for political asylum after defecting last month but the Australian government has discouraged the application, which has been granted only very rarely in the past. About 50 people demonstrated in each of the rallies in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide...

A second Chinese defector has claimed Beijing is running a large spy network in Australia and other Western countries, including the United States, following a similar allegation by a high-ranking Chinese diplomat seeking asylum. The diplomat, Chen Yonglin, the first secretary at the Chinese Consulate-General in Sydney, left his post last month. Chen claimed China had 1,000 spies in Australia involved in illegal activities, including abducting Chinese nationals and smuggling them back to China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has dismissed Chen's claims and said he defected because he wanted to immigrate to Australia with his family. But a second Chinese...

In 1987, after he was exonerated of corruption charges, former Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan issued the classic plea of the wronged man: "Which office do I go to get my reputation back?" Whichever office it is, Ahmad Chalabi may want to apply there as well. The leader of the Iraqi National Congress has been the most unfairly maligned man on the planet in recent years. If you believe what you read, Chalabi is a con man, a crook and, depending on which day of the week it is, either an American or Iranian stooge. The most damning charge is...

Defectors face future together BY DAVID OVALLE AND ELAINE DE VALLE dovalle@herald.com LAS VEGAS - Members of the Havana Night Club show -- newly defected from Cuba -- enjoyed their opening night in these strange surroundings Tuesday, taking solace in what got them here in the first place. Each other. ''You know what gives me strength?'' said José Manuel, 38, a dancer and singer. ``The company. We dance. We act. This is what we want to do and it's what gives me strength.'' Throngs of gamblers stood up and cheered as the troupe preceded its official opening act Tuesday night...