Free Republic

Kidnappers in Iraq have freed one Lebanese hostage, but one remains captive, a Lebanese government source in Beirut said. The source said Jamil Deeb, who was taken hostage last weekend, was freed on Thursday night. His colleague George Frando was still being held. The two men were working in Iraq for a company called Sweidan. At least four Lebanese have been taken hostage in Iraq since the US-led invasion and occupation of the country. One, Hussein Ali Alyan, was killed and dumped by a road along with two Iraqi colleagues. Another, Habib Samour, was released earlier this week after almost...

22 die as Iraqi insurgents freed in raid February 14 2004 at 02:36PM By Suleiman Al-Khalidi Falluja - Dozens of anti-American insurgents stormed Iraqi security compounds in the volatile town of Falluja on Saturday in a bold attack that left at least 22 people dead and freed a number of prisoners. Falluja police chief Aboud al-Dulaimi said about 70 guerrillas firing rockets, mortars and machineguns launched the closely co-ordinated attack on a police headquarters as well as on a compound for the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) and the mayor's office. Police and hospital officials said 14 police officers, four...

A doctor guilty of manslaughter after a teenage cancer sufferer was mistakenly given a fatal injection in his spine has walked free from court. Dr Feda Mulhem admitted manslaughter after he ordered a junior colleague to administer the fatal treatment to Wayne Jowett, 18. Mr Jowett, 18, had been recovering from leukaemia and died a month after the drug was injected into his spine rather than a vein. Mulhem, from Leicester, was sentenced to a total of 18 months in prison for six charges, but allowed to walk free having already served 11 months on remand. Mulhem realised his mistake...

HELSINKI, Finland (AP) -- Unidentifed intruders released more than 7,000 minks from their cages in the middle of the night, the biggest raid on a mink farm in Finland, farmers and officials said Monday. Police were alerted to the minks around 3 a.m. by a passer-by, Detective Chief Inspector Erkki Kerola said. "We got a call from a person who said the area was swarming with minks," he told The Associated Press. "Local inhabitants, the fire brigade and others are helping catch them." No one claimed responsibility for freeing the animals, which are used to make fur coats, Kerola said,...

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - A 25-year-old man arrested last week for allegedly starting a fire that did $1 million in damage to a Hummer dealership was released Monday because the case had not been turned over to the district attorney's office.</p>

Iran envoy in bombing inquiry is freed on bail By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor (Filed: 13/09/2003) A senior Iranian diplomat arrested in Britain last month was released on bail yesterday after the High Court ruled that no evidence had yet been presented to support charges that he was involved in the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. The surprise ruling may be an early hint of problems with the extradition request issued by an Argentine judge, Juan Jose Galeano, who is investigating the attack that killed 85 people in 1994. The High Court decision will relieve...

Hundreds of slaves freed in Brazil By Jan Rocha BBC, Sao Paulo In Brazil, government inspectors from the Ministry of Labour have freed 849 workers being held in conditions of slavery on a coffee farm near Barreiras in the state of Bahia. Labourers are forced to clear forest So far this year inspectors have freed more than 2,000 workers from forced labour, mostly in the Amazon region. In March, the government announced a plan to eradicate slave labour in Brazil. Government inspectors who had been tipped off by a local politician raided a coffee farm in Bahia. They say it...

TEHRAN, April 24 (AFP) - All the Iranian Jews convicted amid widepread controversy in July 2000 of spying for Israel have been freed from prison, Iran's foreign minister announced Thursday. "Those among our Jewish compatriotes who were in prison in Shiraz are now free," Kharrazi said during a press conference with visiting French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. "We hope that in the future we will not see such reprehensible activities that lead to imprisonments," he added. Thirteen Iranian Jews and eight Muslims were arrested in the southern city of Shiraz in 1999, accused of working as a spy-ring for...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The seven newly freed US prisoners of war were increasingly certain they faced death at the hands of their Iraqi captors as US forces pressed north toward Tikrit. Instead, US Marines stormed the place they were being held, according to a Knight Ridder reporter who talked to the seven aboard the C-130 transport aircraft that ferried them from Iraq (news - web sites) to Kuwait Sunday. The group had been moved six times in as many days, Shoshana Johnson said. "It was getting to the point where I believed they were going to kill us," said Johnson,...

Freed aid workers tell of prison torture By Kim Sengupta 13 April 2003 Two members of Médecins Sans Frontières have returned to Baghdad after being arrested and held for eight days by Iraqi secret police, accused of being spies. François Callas and Ibrahim Younous were kept in some of the regime's most notorious prisons before being dumped on the streets in the city of Ramadi, in western Iraq, on Friday evening. The two men were among dozens of foreigners who were picked up by the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, in the dying days of Saddam Hussein's regime and then...

When serial child molester Brian DeVries is released somewhere in San Jose, every move he makes will be tracked by a Global Positioning System device he will wear as an electronic tamper-proof ankle bracelet and carry like a lunchbox. Authorities say if he walked toward an elementary school playground, the portable tracking device -- about the size of two VHS tapes sandwiched together -- would sound a silent electronic alarm sent through a satellite in space. The warning -- usually sent as a text message to a pager -- can be transmitted from the satellite to three places: the Florida...

Surgeon freed after 'dirty bomb' arrest By Phil Reeves Asia Correspondent 20 November 2002 A British-trained Pakistani surgeon was freed yesterday after nearly a month in secret detention. He says he was interrogated by FBI and CIA agents investigating claims that he helped al-Qa'ida develop radiological and nuclear bombs as well as chemical and biological weapons. Dr Amir Aziz, 46, an orthopaedic surgeon – whose ordeal confirms American concerns on the nature of the "dirty bombs" and other weapons that al-Qa'ida might be trying to acquire – said the accusations were "the most ludicrous thing I have heard in my...