Free Republic

The first members of what would later become Iran’s fearsome revolutionary guards were trained in a quiet village outside Paris. Those close to the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in exile in Neauphle-le-Château, secretly began recruiting Iranian revolutionaries in the West to establish a “people’s army”. One of the group’s founders, Mohsen Sazegara, has told The Telegraph that the aim in 1978 was to gather loyalists prepared to confront the Shah’s regime head-on in Iran. The recruits first studied the theory of guerrilla warfare before being dispatched to Beirut and Damascus for military training. There, they learnt...

Former Irish republican fighter and asylum seeker Malachy McAllister will not be deported from the U.S., according to a Washington report. Kevin McAleenan, President Trump’s newly-appointed acting secretary of Homeland Security, has granted a request from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to stay the deportation of McAllister, the Washington Examiner reports. On Thursday, Schumer had called McAleenan asking him to overrule ICE's decision not to grant McAllister political asylum...

Two Republican terror groups opposed to the Good Friday Agreement have denied they are involved in any plot to kill Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. The Irish National Liberation Army and the Continuity IRA said this weekend there are no plans to assassinate Sinn Fein leaders. They also condemned any threats to the two Sinn Fein MPs even though they were political enemies. The INLA and its political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, described claims by Adams that he and Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly were under threat as 'nonsense'. An INLA spokesman told The Observer that the allegation...