Free Republic

The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward. Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used...

A few months after lefty activists crowded Washington D.C. for the Women's March, activists from many of those same organizations went to bat for a serial rapist and murderer. Ledell Lee's victims were all women.  While he was on trial for the rape and murder of Debra Reese, the testimony of three of his rape victims was presented. Lee had made a habit of knocking on doors and asking to borrow some tools to see whether a woman's husband might be home. Debra Reese called her mother and told her that a strange man had tried to borrow some tools....

Two inmates received lethal injections on the same gurney Monday night about three hours apart as Arkansas completed the nation's first double execution since 2000, just days after the state ended a nearly 12-year hiatus on administering capital punishment. While the first inmate, Jack Jones, 52, was executed on schedule, shortly after 7 p.m., attorneys for the second, Marcel Williams, 46, convinced a federal judge minutes later to briefly delay his execution over concerns about how the earlier one was carried out. They claimed Jones "was moving his lips and gulping for air," an account the state's attorney general denied,...

Full title................... The U.S. Supreme Court is refusing to block the first of two scheduled Arkansas lethal injections in one night............

Almost two years after Texas tried to import an execution drug from overseas, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled Thursday that the drug can’t be admitted into the United States. In July 2015, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice tried to import 1,000 vials of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic that the state has previously used in executions, but the FDA seized the drugs at a Houston airport and has held them ever since. The federal agency has maintained that the import of the drug is illegal because it is not currently approved in the U.S. In a statement, the...

Among those convicted and sentenced to death on Monday was Mohamed Badie, the Brotherhood's spiritual guide. If his sentence is confirmed, it would make him the most senior Brotherhood figure sentenced to death since one of the group's leading ideologues, Sayed Qutb, was sentenced and executed in 1966. In announcing the 683 death sentences for violence and the killing of policemen, Judge Said Youssef on Monday also said he was referring his ruling to the Grand Mufti, the nation's top Islamic official — a requirement under Egyptian law, but one that is considered a formality. It does, however, give a...

Putting convicted criminals to death is an issue Sen. Tim Kaine said he had to “grapple” with when he served as governor of Virginia. Kaine chose the death penalty, not abortion, as the issue that posed the biggest conflict with his Roman Catholic faith. “For me, the hardest struggle in my faith life was, the Catholic Church is against the death penalty and so am I,” Kaine said at Tuesday night’s debate. “But I was governor of a state, and the state law said that there was a death penalty for crimes if the jury determined them to be heinous....

According to a report from Iraqi News, the Islamic State staged the public execution of six youths from a “resistance faction” in Mosul by handcuffing them and then killing them with a welding machine, before a large crowd of onlookers. “This came in order to create a state of fear and panic among the people,” said a source from within Mosul. The Toronto Sun explains that the Islamic State often uses the term “resistance group” to describe groups of young people who spray graffiti on the walls of occupied cities. Fox News reported the six boys, whose exact ages are...

ISIS has marked Eid by hanging prisoners upside down from meat hooks and 'butchering them like sheep' in a gruesome new execution video. In one sickening scene, men accused of being US spies are filmed having their throats cut in a slaughter house in Deir ez-Zor, north-eastern Syria. The video, named 'The Making of Illusion' was released on the first day of the Muslim holy time of Eid al-Adha and, bizarrely, features short clips showing actors Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise in the 2015 movie Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

A little, that is. Shadi Hamid writes in the LA Times about why Islam isn't like other faiths -- as I've long been explaining here. He explains the reason the Quran is different from the Bible in very articulate terms: Contrary to what many think, there is no Christian equivalent to Koranic "inerrancy," even among far-right evangelicals. Muslims believe the Koran is not only God's word, but God's actual speech -- in other words, every single letter and word in the Koran comes directly from God. This seemingly semantic difference has profound implications. If the Koran is God's speech, and...

The Iranian government is relying more and more on mass executions in order to control its citizens. Iranian officials used to keep their executions secret. However, over the last year since the nuclear agreement was reached, Iranian authorities have been showing no fear or concern when it comes to publicly announcing that they have mass-executed a group of people. Iran is ranked the first in the world, followed by China, when it comes to hanging people. The mullahs have started the month August by mass executing at least 25 people who are from a religious minority. Not only did Iran...

SUMMER OF SLAUGHTER: ISIS executed 100 people in one week new reports show, including beheading 23 teenagers who were suspected of being spies and burning a two-year-old girl alive. The UK Express reported that this summer has been one of the deadliest under ISIS. According to Iraqi Army Brigadier-General Abdul-Karim Sabawi, “ISIS arrested 23 young men from Nimrod and al-Salamiya and beheaded them.“The deceased were accused of collaboration with the security forces and providing them with important information about the outfit’s movement in Nimrod.”In late July it was reported that ISIS was believed to have executed more than 100 people...

Human rights campaigners warn action is needed to stop use of unlicensed drugs or other legally unsatisfactory methodsHuman rights groups have welcomed news that pharmaceutical firm Pfizer is to block the sale of its drugs in the US to perform executions, but warned that legally dubious alternatives could take their place. All companies licensed by the US government to manufacture drugs for state executions have now blocked their use in lethal injections. Pfizer’s withdrawal follows a campaign targeting pharmaceutical companies and their shareholders. The company said: “Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Two Swedish men were sentenced to life in prison on Monday for assisting in executions in Syria in 2013. Police found a USB stick containing films showing the killings during a search of one of their homes, a Swedish district court was told. In a video shown in court by the prosecutor, masked men stood around three men on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs. Two of the victims have their throats slit. The head of one is cut off and held up for display. Their captors — including the men identified by the...

Hundreds of asylum-seekers entering Norway were discovered to have images of ‘executions’ and ‘severed heads’ on their mobile phones. The revelation comes amid heightened fears that ISIS is exploiting the migrant crisis to smuggle fighters into Europe, following last month’s attacks in Paris. Police admitted that the ‘explosion’ of refugees crossing into the country over the summer and in recent months meant that security checks were less thorough than required, and weren’t checking the background of those entering the country. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3359901/Hundreds-migrants-arriving-Norway-mobile-phones-containing-images-executions-severed-heads-dead-children-police-reveal.html#ixzz3uLYYe4UG Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

A massive crowd assembled to watch ISIS rebels throw another gay man off a building top this week. Hundreds of spectators came out to watch the brutal public execution. It looks like they drove their cars to the execution! The hung the man from his feet and then let him drop! The execution was most likely filmed in Nineveh Province where the Islamists have murdered several gay men. Tweet Translation: Media Office for # and Aah_ninoy Establish the limit on the reaction of the workers of sodomites ISIS is reportedly using “flirting squads” to single out gay men for trial...

As it becomes increasingly difficult to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections, several states have sought to resurrect bygone ways of killing death-row inmates. In Utah, which outlawed death by firing squad in 2004, lawmakers voted last week to reinstate that execution method should the state run out of drugs for lethal injection. Tennessee chose the electric chair last year as its own backup method. Last week, the Alabama House passed a bill that would do the same. Similar measures in Virginia, Missouri, and Wyoming failed last year. But in Oklahoma, a bill is advancing that would introduce an...

<p>OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma would become the first state to allow the execution of inmates using nitrogen gas under a bill that overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives.</p> <p>The House voted 85-10 on Tuesday for the bill by Oklahoma City Republican Rep. Mike Christian, who described the method as humane, painless and easy to administer. There was no debate against the bill, which now heads to the Senate.</p>

Nelson Mandela at the Communist Party’s first public meeting in post-apartheid South Africa, 1990. You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, so I figured I'd get a head start.One of the landmark events of my Gen X youth was the 11-hour, internationally televised “Free Nelson Mandela” concert in 1988. Because, come on: how could you not be anti-apartheid? It was a no-brainer, risk-free cause, the type you could support without having to think about it too much or inviting unpopularity or controversy, right? Actually, no. Lots of big-name musicians who now boast of being on that concert roster...

ABID HUSSAN took one step inside the foul-smelling prison cell and began to shake. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead and behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. The 45-year-old shopkeeper pointed to the electric cables hanging from the ceiling where President Saddam Hussein’s security police would torture him three times a day. People tried to elbow their way inside this impossibly small 6ft by 4ft torture chamber. They were anxious to sift through the documents carpeting the floor to see if it gave a clue as to what became of a loved one, or friend, who had been dragged inside here...