Free Republic

MARIETTA, Ohio - Two men were charged Wednesday with money laundering in support of terrorism after authorities said they found airplane passenger lists and information on airport security checkpoints in their car. Deputies stopped Osama Sabhi Abulhassan, 20, and Ali Houssaiky, 20, both of Dearborn, Mich., on a traffic violation Tuesday. They found the flight documents along with $11,000 cash and 12 phones in the car, said Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks.

Iran's defense minister on Thursday vowed that his country would "use nuclear defense as a potential" if "threatened by any power." Speaking following a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Hassan Ali Turkmani in Teheran on Thursday, Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar emphasized that Iran "should be ready for confronting all kinds of threats." Teheran has denied accusations by the US and its allies that Iran was seeking uranium enrichment technologies in order to develop nuclear weapons, saying its program was only meant to generate electricity. Meanwhile, Turkmani told reporters that Syria and Iran's "policy is the policy of strengthening...

Sometimes a story just doesn't seem to be "all there." Cinnamon Stillwell suspected as much in a NewsBusters item on January 10: Call me overly suspicious, but the story of 16-year-old Farris Hassan traveling to Iraq on a whim strikes me as unbelievable. Hassan's interview with Rita Cosby of MSNBC, a Florida newspaper columnist's skepticism, and a January 18 posting by the Northeast Intelligence Network (NIN), which describes itself as "a small contingent of experienced investigators ..... founded by veteran private investigator Douglas J. Hagmann," all appear to confirm Stillwell's suspicions. What is known of Farris Hassan's saga at this...

Farris Hassan: Journalist or Jihadist?By Joe Kaufman and Beila Rabinowitz, PipeLineNews.org January 16, 2006 - Miami, FL - PipeLineNews.org - The AP story was splashed all over the papers and television - 'U.S. Teen Runs Off to Iraq by Himself.' On the internet, people playfully compared his saga to the 80's comedy hit 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off.' Farris Hassan was the talk and toast of the entire country, "...a young man who feels guilty about the comfort he enjoys, who is brilliant but foolhardy, a boy brimming with idealism and the desire to make a difference." This is the way...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Dec. 30) - A 16-year-old from Florida who traveled to Iraq on his own without telling his parents was put on a flight home Friday, the U.S. Embassy said, while warning Americans of the dangers of undertaking similar journeys... ...Hassan, a junior at Pine Crest School, a prep academy of about 700 students in Fort Lauderdale, recently studied immersion journalism - a writer who lives the life of his subject in order to better understand it. The teenager, whose parents were born in Iraq but have lived in the United States for about 35 years, says he wanted...

Italy probes possible CIA role in abduction By John Crewdson (Chicago) Tribune senior correspondent An Italian prosecutor investigating the apparent kidnapping of a suspected Islamic militant in the streets of Milan served military authorities this week with a demand for records of flights into and out of a joint U.S.-Italian air base in northern Italy. Italian newspapers have reported that the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, is investigating the possible role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the disappearance of Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, better known as Abu Omar, a popular figure in Milan's Islamic community who vanished Feb. 17, 2003....

Italy orders arrest of CIA agents over Imams abduction 6/24/2005 10:45:00 PM GMT Italian authorities ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents accused of kidnapping a Muslim leader Italian authorities ordered the arrest of 13 agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) accused of kidnapping a Muslim leader in northern Italy, an Italian newspaper reported on Friday. The arrest warrants were issued by Italian Judge Chiara Nobili at the request of the anti-terrorist division of the state prosecutor's office, the Corriere della Sera said. The 13 agents are suspected of kidnapping Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar,...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi scientist killed in the U.S. invasion and now linked by arms hunter David Kay to possible nuclear weapons research was working on an advanced gun, not atomic bombs, fellow physicists say. They and eyewitnesses also say Khalid Ibrahim Sa'id was killed not when he tried to "run a roadblock," as asserted by Kay, but when a U.S. tank crew blasted his civilian car without warning on an open street. These accounts of the physicist's research and death, provided by 10 Iraqis and supported on key points by U.N. arms inspectors, challenge a core element of...

US and Iraqi forces raided a suspected insurgent hide-out near Baghdad and arrested several people believed linked to the killing of British aid worker Margaret Hassan. Iraqi police say the raids happened near the town of Madaen, about 40 kilometres south-east of Baghdad. They say 11 people have been detained, including five of who have admitted complicity in the murder of Ms Hassan. Ms Hassan, a British national who was head of CARE International in Iraq, was kidnapped last October. She was killed about a month later after appealing in video messages made by her abductors for British forces to...

  Margaret Hassan's killers seized in IraqBy Lutfi Abu Oun BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces raided homes on the outskirts of Baghdad on Sunday and detained several men believed to be linked to the death of British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who was kidnapped and killed late last year. Iraqi police said the morning raids happened not far from Madaen, a town just south of Baghdad where insurgents have been active in recent weeks. They said 11 people were seized, at least five of whom had admitted complicity in Hassan's murder. The arrests, which may mark a small breakthrough...

Per Fox News...

AN OBSERVATION OF LIBERAL MEDIA HYPOCRASY. The President doesn't hold a press conference fast enough for the media, so they're in their self-rightous mode and bashing Bush. The Jihadists kill the woman who headed up CARE in Iraq, who spent decades helping people who needed help. That obviously had an negative effect on relief efforts in Iraq, yet the liberals all of a sudden are blind to that fact. Feel free to spread the word to your local editor, your local talk radio and to your friends, associates and family.

<p>At least three men reportedly were taken into federal custody in two Pensacola malls as the FBI and the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service initiated a nationwide sweep Wednesday.</p> <p>Witnesses said plain-clothes agents closed Intrigue jewelry vendors at Cordova and University malls, Wild Things at University and possibly other shops.</p>

LONDON -- Dental records have shown that a mutilated body found in Iraq is not that of kidnapped aid worker Margaret Hassan, but British officials say they still believe the British-Irish citizen is dead. The Foreign Office said dental tests were conducted in the United States on a body found in Fallujah by U.S. Marines, who believed it was that of a Western woman. The tests showed the body wasn't Hassan's, a Foreign Office spokesman said. He said he believed the tests had been unable to establish the body's identity. The belief that Hassan was killed was based on a...

Dental records have shown a mutilated body discovered in the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah was not kidnapped Irish-born CARE Australia worker Margaret Hassan. The findings cast doubts over the fate of the 59-year-old head of CARE International's work in Iraq, a position funded by CARE Australia, who was kidnapped by insurgents on her way to work on October 19. No group admitted holding Mrs Hassan and no contact was made with her kidnappers, but a grainy video received by al-Jazeera television in mid-November showed a blindfolded woman in an orange suit being shot. US marines found the body of...

Summary: US Marines in Iraq found the mutilated body of a woman believed to be Margaret Hassan, the British aid worker held hostage by insurgents. Yet it was the video-tape of a US Marine shooting to death a wounded man that he believed threatened his life that became the top story out of Fallujah. Last week, US Marines in Iraq stormed the hornet's nest of Fallujah and dealt the anti-American insurgency a crushing blow, pacifying the mosques, murder dens and sniper holes used by the enemy to kill Americans and pro-US Iraqi policemen. They also found the mutilated body of...

I am nothing more than a timid college professor, but the likely murder of Margaret Hassan compels me to respond to her honesty, hospitality and ultimate sacrifice with my own painful, but ultimately hopeful tribute. Margaret Hassan and I met in Baghdad for several hours in early October 2002, under the most dire circumstances -- a looming American invasion. Care-Australia of Baghdad, which Margaret headed, served as the lead NGO for water rehabilitation in Iraq. My passport held my credentials: letters identifying me as a reporter for the Progressive Magazine and as a researcher for the Canadian affiliate of the...

Terrorists have become film directors and the video camera is their most powerful weapon, with the West a captive audience. In the week of Margaret Hassan's killing, Jason Burke explores the phenomenon of the reality horror show When they kicked down the door of the living room of a house in the western Iraqi city of Falluja on Friday, US marines from the 3/5 Lima Company discovered an improvised television studio equipped with video cameras, banks of computers and cutting-edge editing equipment. According to Captain Ed Batinga, who led the soldiers, an off-white wall behind a wooden table at one...

'I want my wife, dead or alive' 23/11/2004 22:10 - (SA) Baghdad - British aid worker Margaret Hassan's Iraqi husband said in a front-page message carried by a Baghdad newspaper on Tuesday that he wanted her back "dead or alive", a week after an Arab TV network received footage apparently showing his missing wife being murdered. "I want my wife, dead or alive. If she is dead, I urge you to tell me where she is so that I can lay her to rest," said the appeal by Tahsin Hassan printed in the Al-Mashreq daily. "I beg those who took...

Many Iraqis are seemingly too preoccupied by their own kidnapping fears to mourn Margaret Hassan. By Omar Anwar in Baghdad and Sara Tosh in Suleimaniya (ICR No. 90, 19-Nov-04) The apparent death of British aid worker Margaret Hassan sparked an outcry in the western media and was loudly condemned by foreign diplomats and politicians, but the response to the execution was rather more muted in Iraq itself. While most Iraqis expressed their sympathy for Hassan and her family immediately after her capture, there was no hint of public outcry from either the Arab media or the Iraqi people following recent...