Free Republic

In Germany's Lower Saxony and Bavaria, citizens are now barred from publicly displaying the letter "Z," which has become a symbol used by the Russian army during the war. Anyone who displays the symbol at demonstrations or publicly showcases it on cars or buildings could now face a fine or up to three years in jail, according to the Moscow Times. "It is incomprehensible to me how this symbol 'Z' could be used in our country to condone this crime," Boris Pistorius, Lower Saxony's interior minister, said in a statement, according to the news outlet. Similarly, Bavaria's Justice Minister Georg...

When U.S. missiles killed Iran’s most important general and its most important militia leader in early January as they were visiting Baghdad, it looked like American forces would be kicked out of Iraq... More than four months later, not only are U.S. forces still there, but it’s clear that the killings have created space for a new Iraqi government to assert some independence from its powerful neighbor. The signs of this new approach have been building over recent months, and the ascendance last week of Mustafa Al-Kadhimi to the post of transitional prime minister is the latest and most profound......

For two decades after the Second World War, over half of all employees of the West German interior ministry were ex-Nazis, a new study shows. The research, carried out by the Center for Contemporary Historical Studies with the blessing of the Interior Ministry, shows that the number of ex-Nazi party members in both the West and East German postwar administrations was much higher than previously thought. In exact figures, an average of 54 percent of civil servants in the West German interior ministry were former Nazis, although at its high point between 1966 and 1961, two-thirds of all employees at...

The Interior Ministry is planning to beef up its terror response capacity by setting up an new elite unit to be deployed in emergency situations, on top of Germany’s existing GSG 9. The government is taking the step as a response to the recent terror attacks in France and Denmark, believing that Germany’s current reaction capacity is too limited, reports Der Spiegel. Germany needs “a robust unit that can confront such situations,” said the Christian Democrat (CDU) specialist for the interior, Armin Schuster. …

About 100 armed tribesman broke into the Yemeni Interior Ministry, Sunday afternoon, demanding to be inducted into the police force of the capital, Sana'a, according to local media reports. The gunmen took over the building and took hostages but released them...

Shiite militiamen and criminals entrenched throughout Iraq’s police and internal security forces are blocking recent efforts by some Iraqi leaders and the American military to root them out, a step critical to winning the trust of skeptical Sunni Arabs and quelling the sectarian conflict, Iraqi and Western officials say. The new interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, who oversees the police, lacks the political support to purge many of the worst offenders, including senior managers who tolerated or encouraged the infiltration of Shiite militias into the police under the previous government, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials who work...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 26 — American and Iraqi government forces clashed with Shiite militiamen in Baghdad tonight in the most serious confrontation in months, and Iraqi officials said the fighting left at least 17 Iraqis dead, including an 80-year-old imam. The fighting erupted at a very combustible moment in Iraq, with sectarian tensions rising, leadership problems deepening, and dozens of mutilated bodies continuing to surface on Iraqi streets today.Another concern is that the clash could open an old wound, because the militiamen who were killed worked for Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who has already led several bloody rebellions...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's Interior Ministry has launched an investigation into claims that a police death squad has been operating in the country, a top official said Thursday. Attacks around the country killed at least 19 people, including six Iraqis in a car bombing and three sheiks in a drive-by shooting. Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari also condemned the latest images of detainees abused in the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, but noted that those responsible had already been punished. The investigation into the death squads was announced as police found the bodies of 12 more men who...

Senior Iraqi officials Sunday confirmed for the first time that death squads composed of government employees had operated illegally from inside two government ministries. "The deaths squads that we have captured are in the defense and interior ministries," Minister of Interior Bayan Jabr said during a joint news conference with the Minister of Defense. "There are people who have infiltrated the army and the interior." Knight Ridder first reported the accusation of death squads in February last year, and in June documented many cases in which victims were taken away allegedly by men wearing Interior Ministry commando uniforms were later...

The Iraqi Secretary of State to the governorships kidnapped AL BASRA (Iraq) - the Iraqi Secretary of State for the governorships Waël Abdel Latif was kidnapped Sunday afternoon, indicated to AFP a person in charge for the governorship of al Basra (southern of Iraq). "Waël Abdel Latif was kidnapped with ten of its guards in the south of Baghdad", indicated this source, which required anonymity. The disappearance of the minister had been initially reported by a source of the ministry for the Interior.

May. 20, 2003 Eitam calls on PM to revoke Int. Minister's authority on conversions (UPDATE) By THE JERUSALEM POST INTERNET STAFF</P< Construction and Housing Minister Effi Eitam (NRP) on Tuesday called on the prime minister to revoke Interior Minister Avraham Poraz's authority on conversions to Judaism and the granting of Israeli citizenship, after Poraz announced he would stop the automatic granting of citizenship to converts to Judaism in Israel. "Citizenship will be granted based on humanitarian concerns such as uniting families, identification with Israel, or an ability to concretely contribute to Israeli society, in the case of artists, scientists or...

MAKHACHKALA, OCTOBER 12 /from RIA Novosti's Dekabr Beibutov/ - Two caches of weapons and ammunitions have been discovered at the Botlikh sector of the administrative border between Daghestan and Chechnya. Colonel Abdulmanat Musayev, chief of the press service of Daghestan's Interior Ministry, said Saturday that last Friday, interior troops and police discovered a camouflaged 73-mm artillery gun in the Vedeno district of Chechnya. Apart from that, according to him, another cache containing 8 hand anti-tank grenade launchers, 5 rounds to them, and 60 underbarrel grenade launcher rounds were discovered in the area of the Kenkhi settlement in the Shatoi district...