Free Republic

Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has secured the release of 17 prisoners foreign governments had detained. “We’ve had 17 released, and we’re very proud of that record. Very proud. And we have others coming,” Trump said Saturday evening as he welcomed home Joshua Holt, an American citizen who had been detained in Venezuela for two years without trial. Unlike his predecessor, the president has managed to bring these prisoners home without freeing terrorists or paying millions of dollars in suspected ransom payments. 1. Sabrina De Sousa: Portuguese-American Sabrina De Sousa, a former CIA agent, was arrested and...

Former CIA case officer Sabrina De Sousa thanked the Trump administration for intervening to save her from extradition to Italy and imprisonment in a statement on Friday. “I want to extend my deepest appreciation to the Trump administration for all their efforts on my behalf. Without their support I would be spending tonight in an Italian prison,” said De Sousa, in a statement quoted by Fox News. “The Obama administration and former CIA Director John Brennan abandoned De Sousa the last seven years, and in six weeks, the Trump team made her freedom possible,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) told Fox...

An "extraordinary" effort by the new U.S. administration prevented former CIA officer Sabrina de Sousa from being the first ever extradited for an alleged CIA misdeed, according to her spokesman. De Sousa, who was set to be extradited from Portugal to Italy over the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric, won a last-minute reprieve on Wednesday. Sabrina de Sousa was one of 26 people convicted in absentia for the 2003 abduction of radical Egyptian cleric Osama Mustapha Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. He was then transported to his native Egypt for interrogation where he says he was tortured.

ABC News' Rachel Martin reports: The US intelligence gathering program known as “extraordinary rendition” was essentially put on trial for the first time - in Italy - and this week the court rendered a guilty verdict. Italian Judge Oscar Magi convicted 23 Americans of the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric on a street in Milan, Italy. The cleric, known as Abu Omar, alleged that he was abducted by CIA operatives who then shuttled him between US bases in Europe and then moved him to Egypt where Omar says he was tortured. The Italian judge tried the Americans, all but...

A former CIA counterterrorism officer who is set to be extradited to Italy where she faces a four-year prison sentence in connection with the rendition of a suspected terrorist that took place in Milan in 2003 said Hillary Clinton is partially to blame for her ordeal. Sabrina De Sousa, two-dozen other CIA officers, and an Air Force colonel were convicted in absentia in 2009 in Italy on kidnapping and other charges in connection with the abduction of Osama Mustapha Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, a radical Egyptian cleric whose fiery anti-American speeches in the immediate aftermath of 9/11...

Mark Finkelstein June 8, 2006 You just knew it. The MSM had to find a way to downplay the significance of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Whereas he had been portrayed as the key to violence in the country, now that he's dead, he is described as just one among many. And sure enough, on CNN this morning at about 6:20 AM, there was Octavia Nasr CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs, interviewed by host Soledad O'Brien, suggesting that Zarqawi's death might not really be such a big deal, after all. She reported...

What We Can Learn From Britain About Iran By VALI NASR and RAY TAKEYH April 5, 2007 THROUGH the capture of and subsequent announcement that it would release 15 British sailors and marines, the Islamic Republic of Iran sent its adversaries a pointed message: just as Iran will meet confrontation with confrontation, it will respond to what it perceives as flexibility with pragmatism. This message is worth heeding as the United States and Iran seem to be moving inexorably toward conflict. The timing of the Britons’ capture was no accident. The incident followed the passage of a United Nations resolution...

The insider-account of the damaging divisions between the White House and the State Department comes as diplomats around the world wait to see if John Kerry, the new US secretary of state, can persuade Mr Obama to greater engagement on Syria, Egypt and the wider Middle East. Vali Nasr, a university professor who was seconded in 2009 to work with Richard Holbrooke, Mr Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, records his profound disillusion at how a "Berlin Wall" of domestic-focused advisers was erected to protect Mr Obama. "The president had a truly disturbing habit of funnelling major foreign policy...

Snippet: "Iran and its terrorist proxy groups’ influence in Latin America remains a troubling security threat to the region and world, experts said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday."

"My time in the Obama administration turned out to be a deeply disillusioning experience." It was close to midnight on Jan. 20, 2009, and I was about to go to sleep when my iPhone beeped. There was a new text message. It was from Richard Holbrooke. It said, "Are you up, can you talk?" When I called, he told me that Barack Obama had asked him to serve as envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He would work out of the State Department, and he wanted me to join his team. "No one knows this yet. Don't tell anyone. Well, maybe...

As if the threat of deadly drug cartels in Mexico wasn't enough, some of them are joining forces with Middle East terror groups. "Hezbollah are absolute masters at identifying existing smuggling infrastructures," says former DEA Chief of Operations Mike Braun, adding that the group "is developing relations with those responsible for operating those smuggling operations and then forming close relations with them, so that they can move anything they have an interest into virtually anywhere in the world." That comment comes from former DEA Chief of Operations Mike Braun. He goes on to tell me that the Middle East terror...

A 52-year-old Highland Park father is one of two U.S. citizens charged with agreeing to sell missiles and other weapons to the Taliban for their use against American troops in Afghanistan, according to a complaint unsealed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan last week. Oded Orbach, born in Israel, was among seven men arrested in an international sting operation by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Paid informants posing as Taliban representatives conspired with the men to ship narcotics through West Africa — with a portion intended for the United States — and to use the proceeds to buy weapons for protecting Taliban-owned...

An appellate court in Milan upheld on Wednesday the conviction of 23 Americans charged with kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in 2003 and ordered even harsher sentences. All but one of the Americans are Central Intelligence Agency operatives.

ISLAMIC-TERRORIST HEZBULLAH'S "SPIRITIUAL" IMAM FADLALLAH - GOOD RIDDENSFadlallah - When mass suicide [homicide] bombing was invented. The new dimension of international terrorism - Page 115 Stefan M. Aubrey - 2004 - 312 pages [p. 115-116] A further extension of this philosophy can be found in the teachings of the Lebanese spiritual leader Shaykh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. While Fadlallah agreed that the teachings of the Koran provided for the use of force and jihad for defensive purposes, the contemporary situation of the Middle East creates a scenario that tends to breed violence. [...] justification of violent action in the name of...

CNN is just having a dickens of a time finding unbiased "reporters" and anchors these days. Most don't seem to have the self discipline to contain their emotions during newscasts and interviews. But finally the nation may have seen where CNN's threshhold just may be. Octavia Nasr, CNN's Senior ME correspondent, found herself canned by the nation's second media news giant after twittering her sorrow over the death of Hezbollah terrorist, Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. She spent the next hours trying to undo what she had done with more clarification: Facing an immediate and harsh backlash, she backpeddled back pedaled...

CNN’s firing of Senior Middle East News Editor Octavia Nasr has prompted an outcry from Arab-Americans, angry about what they see as a double standard when it comes to coverage of the Middle East in the American media. Nasr’s 20-year career at CNN ended Wednesday after a tweet mourning the death of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a Lebanese Shiite cleric whom she called “one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” Facing a rash of criticism, she explained her tweet in a blog post, saying her respect was based on Fadlallah’s advocacy for women’s rights.

TEL AVIV – CNN's senior Middle East affairs editor is leaving the media company after it was reported she professed her "respect" for an anti-American Islamic extremist who was an ideological guide to the Hezbollah terror group and who was accused of masterminding a 1983 attack on U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans. "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah ... one of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot," CNN senior editor for Middle East affairs Octavia Nasr wrote on her personal Twitter page earlier this week. Now Mediate.com obtained an internal CNN...

Vali Reza Nasr, a senior Obama administration advisor on Iran, has come to Iran. Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani and former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel may be behind the visit. "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was informed well after Nasr entered the country," Tabnak reported on Wednesday. Nasr was appointed senior advisor to Richard Holbrooke -- the special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tabnak and Fararu claim the unannounced trip by the US official to be linked to the recent release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.

The bizarre story behind the construction of Boston's most controversial building

A Muslim cleric has claimed to have been tortured with electric shocks, left in a cell where rats crawled on him and threatened with rape after he was allegedly kidnapped from a Milan street by CIA agents three years ago.The claims of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, appeared in an affidavit provided to Milan prosecutors investigating his alleged abduction in February 2003, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported yesterday. Prosecutors say that the cleric, who was formerly suspected of links to terrorism, was driven to the Aviano military air base and flown via Germany to...