Free Republic

“Death to Putin, you brought up a monster and a murderer,” the note said, urging the deceased parents to “take him with you, he’s causing so much pain and trouble”, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe. “The whole world is praying he would die,” the note said. ...Also on Thursday, a Russian military court sentenced Nikita Tushkanov, a history teacher from Komi in northeast Russia, to five and a half years in prison for comments he made about last year’s explosion on the Kerch bridge linking Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula to mainland Russia.

An interrogator accidentally stepped on a prisoner's Koran, copies of Islam's holy text got wet when guards tossed water balloons into a cellblock and one was "splashed" by urine, according to the final results of a Pentagon probe. But the investigation sparked by accusations in the press about desecration of the Koran here found "no credible evidence" that prison guards or interrogators "ever flushed a Koran down a toilet," the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the prison for terrorism suspects, said yesterday. The findings show that al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at the detention center themselves mishandled Korans on 15...

Pakistani killed for desecrating Koran A man in a small village in western Pakistan was shot and killed after a local cleric declared him an infidel for desecrating the Koran. Ashiq Nabi, who had been on the run since Monday after being accused of blasphemy, was shot Wednesday after begging for his life and then climbing a tree to escape an angry mob of about 400 villagers, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported. Ashiq, who lived in a village about 18 miles outside Peshawar, allegedly had desecrated the Koran Monday during an argument with his wife. After his uncle complained, police...