Free Republic

The U.S. has arrested Zubayr Al-Bakoush, alleged to be one of the leaders of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced the arrest on Friday. Bondi said that Al-Bakoush was charged with charges of murder, terror and arson, all related to the 2012 attack. "Zubayr Al-Bakoush will now face American justice on American soil. We will prosecute this alleged terrorist to the fullest extent of the law," Bondi said on Friday. "Let this case serve as a reminder: If you commit a crime against...

WASHINGTON — One of the architects of the deadly 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, has been arrested and will be prosecuted on arson, murder and terrorism charges, Justice Department officials announced Friday. “ Zubayr Al-Bakoush landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. this morning. He is in our custody. He was greeted by [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel and [DC] US Attorney Jeanine Pirro,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at DOJ headquaters. . Prosecutors “will prosecute this alleged terrorist to the fullest extent of the law,” Bondi vowed, while Pirro said she and her...

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son to late long-time Libyan dictator, Moammar Gadhafi, was killed on Tuesday in his home in the western town of Zintan in western Libya. Sources close to him say four masked gunmen stormed his home to carry out the “heinous crime”. Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son and one-time heir apparent of Libya’s late dictator Moammar Gadghafi, was killed in Libya late on Tuesday. Sources close to him say the 53-year old was shot by gunmen in the town of Zintan, 136 kilometres southwest of the capital Tripoli. The death was confirmed by Gadhafi’s lawyer, Khaled al-Zaidi, who announced...

Libya's Saif al-Islam Gaddafi went from his notorious father's heir apparent to a decade of captivity and obscurity in a remote hill town before launching a presidential bid that helped derail an attempted election. He has been killed, sources close to the family, his lawyer Khaled el-Zaydi and Libyan media said on Tuesday. Details surrounding the circumstances of his death were not immediately clear. Despite holding no official position, he was once seen as the most powerful figure in the oil-rich North African country after his autocrat father Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled for more than four decades. Saif al-Islam shaped...

How Does Society Readjust its Direction in Case of Deviation from its Law? "If an instrument of governing is dictatorial, as in political systems in the world today, the society's vigilance towards deviation from law will have only one way to gain readjustment. That is violence, which means revolution against the instrument of governing. This violence or revolution, even if it is an expression of the feeling of the society against deviation, is not carried out by the whole society. It is undertaken only by those who have the initiative and boldness to proclaim the will of the society." The...

Bout is alleged to have fueled multiple conflicts across the globe through arms dealing, sometimes to both sides ... A senior defense official is concerned that convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the "Merchant of Death" .. could go back to illegally trafficking weapons, thereby fueling deadly conflicts around the world. "I think there is a concern that he would return to doing the same kind of work that he's done in the past.. Bout was in the middle of serving a 25-year prison sentence in a U.S. prison for several offenses, including conspiring to kill Americans ... Bout, a...

An African church minister who supplements his meagre stipend by scrabbling for minerals in the artisanal mines of eastern Sierra Leone has discovered one of the largest diamonds ever found. The 709-carat stone was extracted this week by Emmanuel Momoh, a pastor in one of the myriad churches that ministers to the mining communities of Kono district, the diamond centre that became the crucible of Sierra Leone’s blood-soaked civil war. It is believed to be the 13th largest uncut diamond ever to be pulled from the ground, industry analysts said. The stone is to be auctioned, the Sierra Leonean government...

While the world’s attention is focused on the combat transpiring in Libya and the events in Egypt and Bahrain, Yemen has also descended into crisis. The country is deeply split over its support for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and this profound divide has also extended to the most powerful institutions in the country — the military and the tribes — with some factions calling for Saleh to relinquish power and others supporting him. The tense standoff in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa has served to divert attention (and security forces) from other parts of the country. On March 28,...

John King reported this morning that a reporter from CNN was able to interview a lead suspect in the Benghazi terror attack for two hours: The FBI has reportedly not been able to track-down the suspect, but CNN had no problem talking to him for two hours. "It is interesting," says King. "The FBI has put some photos up on its website of people of interest, but they haven't arrested anybody. And I'll tell you this: We've been working on a project here at CNN for a special due out later ... And Arwa Damon, our great correspondent, went back...

WASHINGTON — On most days now, Mahdi Obeidi rides his new mountain bike, plays with his grandkids and works on getting a U.S. patent for technology he originally developed to build a nuclear bomb for Saddam Hussein. Obeidi, who headed Hussein's uranium enrichment program until it was shut down in 1991, is the only Iraqi weapons scientist that the CIA is known to have brought to the United States after the invasion last year. The CIA also flew eight of his family members here in August 2003 and secretly set them up in three adjoining apartments in a leafy Virginia...

Turkish authorities closed Ankara’s airspace as a precaution after it lost contact with the plane and diverted multiple commercial flights away from Esenboga Airport. The commander's death was later confirmed by Turkish and Libyan officials. ============================================================= urkish officials temporarily closed down airspace over its capital of Ankara on Tuesday night after a business jet that carried Libya’s top military commander crashed near the city after he concluded an official visit to the country. The plane carrying Chief of the General Staff of Libya’s armed forces Muhammed Ali Ahmed Al-Haddad and four others lost contact roughly 30 minutes after departing Esenboga...

The Obama administration has lifted longtime restrictions on Libyans attending flight schools in the United States and training here in nuclear science, according to a final amendment of the ban recently approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

IRVINE, Calif. — On the morning of Feb. 28, 2000, a man in a black hood ran up to Patrick Riley in front of his office, shot him flush in the face and fled. The bullet missed his brain, and Mr. Riley, a biotechnology entrepreneur, survived. But two days later, his business partner, a doctor named Larry C. Ford, killed himself with a shotgun after learning he was suspected of being the mastermind behind the shooting. That is where the story probably would have ended — a lurid but ultimately local piece of intrigue played out in the sun-splashed Orange...

President Trump’s words and actions Monday – railing against “weak” governors and mayors, then holding a Bible outside a historic church near the White House – may have marked “the beginning of the end” of American democracy, a retired four-star Marine Corps general writes in an op-ed article. “The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020,” John Allen, who served as a special envoy for the global alliance against ISIS under former President Barack Obama and now heads the Brookings Institution think tank, writes in Foreign Policy magazine. “Remember the date. It...

The White House has paused all immigration applications from 19 countries and canceled citizenship ceremonies across the US, citing national security and public safety concerns. The freeze could affect more than 1.5 million people who had asylum applications pending and more than 50,000 who received asylum grants under the Biden administration, The New York Times reports. President Donald Trump is also considering expanding the travel ban to more than 30 countries, according to the New York Post. The new policy memorandum, released Tuesday night, cites last week’s 'terror attack' in D.C. where Afghan man Rahmanullah Lakanwal was arrested for allegedly...

The British government sought on Tuesday to limit the information it would disclose at a planned inquest into the death of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former officer in the K.G.B. who succumbed to radiation poisoning in London more than six years ago. The coroner hearing the case said that it may now be postponed. “Due to the complexity of the investigation which necessarily precedes the hearings,” the coroner, Sir Robert Owen, said, “it may not be possible to adhere” to the planned May 1 start date for the hearings. The inquest would be the first — and probably the only...

From 7/7 to Manchester 2025 – the story they refuse to tellAfter the Manchester synagogue attack, I began tracing two decades of Islamic terrorism in Britain – uncovering a disturbing pattern hidden in plain sight. This is not prejudice. It’s record-keeping – and a warning about policies putting us all at risk.ManchesterI didn’t learn about the Manchester synagogue terrorist attack until I opened my phone after Yom Kippur had ended. I had also missed messages from my cousin, who had witnessed the event and been evacuated from her home by the police.By 7:30 the following morning, I had already traced...

Flicking through his school yearbooks, they have, instead, come to terms with the fact he has become among America's most wanted.Flicking through his school yearbooks, they have, instead, come to terms with the fact he has become among America's most wanted. Robinson, who came from a hard-working Mormon home, now stares back at America from a grim mugshot. If found guilty, he could face the death penalty, after his anguished father turned him in to the police. Neighbours and old friends in the heartland of southern Utah have been left reeling, struggling to reconcile the smiling boy-next-door they knew with...

Authorities in southern Libya have uncovered a prehistoric rock art site believed to be as much as 10,000 years old, following a report from a resident who spotted unusual engravings on rock faces in the Al-Hasawna Mountains, near Wadi Mubarak. The discovery has sparked major archaeological interest and led to immediate protective action by Libyan officials. The markings were first brought to the attention of the Sabha branch of the Tourist Police and Antiquities Protection Agency. A formal investigation was launched soon after, with the Public Order Prosecution in Sabha and the Fezzan Antiquities Authority notified to oversee the site’s...

Yet another member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigative team is facing questions over potential bias after it emerged that she used to represent ex-Obama aide Ben Rhodes and the Clinton Foundation.Jeannie Rhee is a former partner at WilmerHale—the high-profile law firm where Mueller worked prior to taking on the special counsel role. She is one of at least three attorneys who followed Mueller from WilmerHale.At the firm, Rhee focused on representing people in government investigations, including white-collar criminal probes and criminal and civil fraud matters.But this week, details of Rhee’s client relationships emerged, revealing that she represented Obama...