Free Republic

BAGHDAD/MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Hundreds of convicts, including senior members of al Qaeda, broke out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail as comrades launched a military-style assault to free them.

MEDAN, Indonesia (AP) — Authorities were searching for scores of inmates, including terrorists, who escaped a crowded Indonesian prison that was still burning Friday after prisoners set fires and started a deadly riot at the facility in the nation's third-largest city. Thousands of policemen and soldiers are deployed around Tanjung Gusta prison to blockade roads linking Medan, the capital of North Sumatra, to other provinces were blockaded while fire brigades were battling the fires. About 200 prisoners escaped following the riot late Thursday in which three prison employees and two inmates were killed. Officers deployed to hunt the escaped inmates...

I can only imagine three possible explanations, all of which should be taken with many grains of salt: 1. Intelligence from faraway conflict areas can be hazy, and the story got honestly confused. Who knows how long or convoluted the chain of information was from Benghazi to Broadwell, whether or not it went through Petraeus, and it’s not hard to imagine a misstatement or mistake getting amplified. 2. She made it up or exaggerated some other piece of information, possibly including the name-dropping implication of Petraeus’s knowledge, either deliberately or mistakenly. 3. The story is true, and she let slip...

This seems like a pretty good reason to push the David Petraeus-Paula Broadwell affair from a boys-club peccadillo into a resignation-worthy event. According to a transcript of a speech by Broadwell at the University of Denver the week before the election, Broadwell told an audience that the reason for the September 11 attack on the Benghazi consulate was neither a YouTube video nor a celebration of the anniversary of 9/11, but a prison escape for jihadis secretly held by the CIA in its nearby annex. Late last night, the CIA denied this report of a secret prison in its now-abandoned...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Authorities in Tennessee say two men have been arrested, including a former prison guard, for a plot to break out Tennessee's lone female death row inmate, Christa Gail Pike. New Jersey State Police on Monday arrested 34-year-old Donald Kohut of Flemington, N.J., who has frequently visited Pike in prison, on a charge of bribery and conspiracy to commit escape.

Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office deputies are on alert after 85 prisoners escaped from a prison south of the border in Reynosa. Mexican officials reported that 85 prisoners used a ladder to scale a fence at the CEDES prison in Reynosa around 4:15 a.m. Friday. Mexico's Attorney General's Office is questioning 44 guards and what role they may had in the jailbreak. CNN Mexico reported that 66 of the guards were being housed for federal crimes while the other 19 were jailed for common crimes. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño told Action 4 News that American law enforcement officials were nofified...

Apple is apparently ramping up its battle to prevent iPhone and iPod owners from jailbreaking their devices. The company has applied for a patent, titled "Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device," that covers a series of security measures to automatically protect devices from thieves and other "unauthorized users." Unauthorized users apparently applies to those who engage in jailbreaking, which allows devices to run apps not approved by the company producing the operating system--such as Apple, the main target of such bypasses.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Owners of the iPhone will be able to legally unlock their devices so they can run software applications that haven't been approved by Apple Inc., according to new government rules announced Monday. The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized use of copyright-protected material. For iPhone jailbreakers, the new rules effectively legitimize a practice that has been operating in a legal gray area by exempting it...

Gang members who once ruled Haiti's largest slum with violence and intimidation have returned to the streets after stealing guns from prison guards at the collapsed National Penitentiary and destroying all records of their crimes. More than 3,000 inmates broke free from the prison after the earthquake hit last Tuesday, brandishing assault rifles and mounted on motorcycles, before returning to the Cite Soleil shanty town.

LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that HOPE SPINATO, 42, of Pinebush, New York, was sentenced yesterday to eight months in prison by United States District Judge KENNETH M. KARAS in White Plains federal court. SPINATO, a former correctional officer at Federal Correctional Institute Otisville (“FCI Otisville”), pleaded guilty on April 21, 2009, to one count of aiding and assisting an inmate escape from FCI Otisville. According to the Information filed in White Plains federal court and a previously filed Complaint: On or about July 15, 2007, SPINATO, who was...

MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish police said on Friday they had foiled an Italian drug trafficker's plan to break out of jail in the Canary Islands using climbing equipment and a four-meter-long zeppelin. "The plan consisted of using a remotely controlled zeppelin to bring him night-vision goggles and climbing equipment with which to escape," a National Police statement said.

A cult leader jailed for sex attacks on children escaped in a helicopter from a prison on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion on Monday, the regional administration said. Juliano Verbard, who was serving a 15-year term for rapes and sex assaults on children, and two of his jailed followers were hauled on board a chopper hijacked by three accomplices, said senior official Jean-Francois Moniotte. -snip-

L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca talks during an interview in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, Feb. 23, 2009. Baca says he may have to release nearly 4,000 inmates early and eliminate deputy positions to cope with cuts to his department's budget. The head of the nation's largest sheriff's department is warning that nearly 4,000 jail inmates might be released early and about 600 deputy and professional positions could be eliminated to meet budget cuts. Owing to the economic crisis, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department faces a $71 million cut to its $2.5 billion budget in the coming fiscal...

Prison escape here in Huntsville, TX. Illegal Alien 5'7", 200 pounds, tattooed.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Nearly all of an estimated 1,150 prisoners, including some 400 Taliban inmates, fled a prison in Kandahar on Friday after Taliban insurgents blew open the main gate, officials said.

Jail Blast Frees Hundreds Of Taliban Updated:22:34, Friday June 13, 2008 Hundreds of Taliban militants have escaped from a prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, after a co-ordinated suicide bomb and rocket attack tore through the jail's defences. Nearly all of an estimated 1,150 prisoners fled when a Taliban suicide bomber blew open the main gate, officials said. Eyewitnesses reported that the fighters fired several rockets at various parts of the mud-built prison. "All the prisoners escaped. There is no one left," said Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai and the president of Kandahar's provincial council. Militants first exploded a...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents blew open the gate of a main prison in the Afghan city of Kandahar on Friday, allowing hundreds of prisoners including suspected militants to escape, officials said. Under cover of darkness, nearly all of an estimated 1,150 prisoners, including some 400 Taliban inmates, fled from the jail, two officials in the southern city of Kandahar told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Another official said between 750 and 800 prisoners had managed to escape, adding some prisoners were killed in a gun battle between police and Taliban fighters inside the jail. "I think scores of...

LAUREL, Md. — An inmate who escaped from a Maryland hospital with a guard's gun and shot a driver in the head in a carjacking during his getaway is dead, Prince George's County Police told FOXNews.com Kelvin Poke, 45, was shot and killed during his capture, apparently in an exchange of gunfire with officers near Cedar Hill Cemetery in Suitland, Md., according to a spokesman for Prince George's County Police Department. Poke was pronounced dead at Prince George's Hospital Center, said Suzanne Almalel, a spokeswoman for Dimensions Healthcare System, which operates the hospital.

An inmate who escaped from a Maryland hospital with a guard's gun and shot a driver in the head in a carjacking during his getaway is dead, Prince George's County Police told FOXNews.com Kelvin Poke, 45, was shot and killed during his capture, apparently in an exchange of gunfire with officers near Cedar Hill Cemetery in Suitland, Md., according to a spokesman for Prince George's County Police Department. Poke was pronounced dead at Prince George's Hospital Center, said Suzanne Almalel, a spokeswoman for Dimensions Healthcare System, which operates the hospital. During a 4 p.m. EST press conference, Maryland State Police...

LAUREL, Md. — A manhunt was under way for an inmate serving life in prison for kidnapping and other crimes after he escaped from a hospital with a guard's gun, then drove off in a vehicle after shooting the driver in the head. Authorities were searching for Kelvin Poke, 45, who carjacked a second car after abandoning the first, Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley told reporters Wednesday. "There is an active search under way in the District of Columbia," said Shipley. Federal authorities and the U.S. Marshals Service were involved