Free Republic

More than 20 people have been rescued in Kenya from a suspected human trafficking ring that lured them with job offers in Russia but intended to send them to fight in Ukraine, police said. It follows an intelligence-led raid on a residential apartment on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi, where officers seized recruitment materials, travel documents, and job offer letters. One suspect, accused of coordinating the victims' travel to Russia in September and October, has been arrested. He was taken to court, which allowed him to be detained for 10 days while the police complete their investigations. There have...

Ukrainian drones on Saturday struck an oil pumping station in the Russian Volga riverside region of Chuvashia, causing the station to halt work, regional governor Oleg Nikolaev said in a statement posted on Telegram. Nikolaev said that the attack took place near the village of Konar, around 1200km (745 miles) from Ukrainian territory. He said there had been no casualties and only “minor damage” inflicted. Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in recent weeks targeting refineries and export terminals to reduce Moscow’s export revenues, stir domestic discontent and push the Kremlin to peace talks. The attacks...

Russia has said it believes NATO is plotting a "landing" in Ukraine as part of a bid by the European Union to "occupy" Moldova. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed NATO military units were massing in Romania close to the Moldovan border and were also planning a "landing" in Ukraine's Odesa region, according to TASS, Moscow's state news agency. Why It Matters Moldova goes to the polls on Sunday in a critical parliamentary election. The vote is seen as a stark choice for the country between a path to EU membership or closer ties with Moscow. Following Russia’s invasion...

The very fighters Beijing cites as justification for its hardline policies in Xinjiang – the Uyghurs of the Turkestan Islamic Party – have now been folded into Syria’s military establishment.Syrian Free Army soldiers and Coalition Forces assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, Task Force Armadillo provide security after departing a CH-47 Chinook during cold and hot load air assault training at Al-Tanf Garrison, Syria, on Feb. 23, 2025. When Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime collapsed in late 2024, Beijing lost a familiar ally in Damascus. For more than a decade, China had backed Assad under the banner of sovereignty and...

Investigators said they had found evidence of “systematic torture” at detention centers where the military government is holding children as proxies for their parents.U.N.-backed investigators say they have found significant evidence of “systematic torture” at Myanmar detention centers, where the military government is holding children as young as 2 years old as proxies for their parents. The Southeast Asian nation of about 54 million people has been mired in turmoil since 2021, when democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was overthrown by the military. The coup set off mass protests across the country that were violently suppressed, followed by...

Ansar al Islam, which goes by the moniker Jamaat Ansar al Islam in Syria, has been coordinating its efforts with the Al Nusrah Front and Jaish al Muhajireen wal Ansar in a major battle for two Shiite villages north of Aleppo. The villages of Zahra and Nubl have been besieged by anti-regime elements since late November. Rebel forces have previously surrounded the villages and cut off electric and water services to the citizens. The two towns are located on a road to Turkey that is a key supply route into Aleppo. Ansar al Islam is an al Qaeda-affiliated group that...

LATAKIA, Syria - The young man’s heart was sliced from his chest and placed on his body. His name was No. 56 on a handwritten list of 60 dead that included his cousins, neighbors and at least six children from their coastal Syrian village.The men who killed 25-year-old Suleiman Rashid Saad called his father from the young victim’s phone and dared him to fetch the body. It was next to the barbershop.“His chest was wide open. They cut out his heart. They put it on top of his chest,” said his father, Rashid Saad. It was late afternoon on March...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that the Syrian transitional authority may be weeks away from potential collapse and full-scale civil war, defending US President Donald Trump's decision to lift Syria sanctions and to engage with the Damascus government. "It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they're facing, are maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up," Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Baloch of western Pakistan have declared themselves independant. Summarizes Baloch Welfare Assn of India's letter to the Indian PM enumerating the Pakistani's attrocities and human rights violations. Speaks to son of political prisoner being kept in perpetual solitary. Describes Balochis as non-militant moderates.

The horrors of Islamic war rage in Syria. A young Alawite girl, Mira, was kidnapped and married to an Afghan jihadi fighter. Her father was threatened with death if he did not keep quiet and the government forces protected the Afghan man who raped the Alawite girl. The government forces also fabricated a false story to justify this marriage and that the girl had run away with this Afghan man. ... The young woman Mira Jalal Thabat (20 years old), the only child of her parents from the village of Al-Makhtabiyah in Talkalakh, went missing inside the Teacher Training Institute...

Myanmar's military junta has continued to bomb parts of the war-torn country following the major earthquake there, which has killed more than 1,600 people. The UN has described the attacks as "completely outrageous and unacceptable". Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews told the BBC that it was "nothing short of incredible" that the military was continuing to "drop bombs when you are trying to rescue people" after the earthquake. He called on the military regime, which seized power in a coup nearly four years ago to stop all military operations. "Anyone who has influence on the military needs to step up the...

On 6 December 2024 Romania’s Constitutional Court cancelled the country’s presidential election while runoff voting was already underway in the diaspora. Domestically and internationally, this was justified on the basis of “Russian interference” in the first round, held on 24 November, when little-known independent candidate Calin Georgescu had shockingly topped the poll. The Trump-aligned Georgescu, widely accused by the mainstream media of pro-Russia views, was running on a very effective nationalist, pro-peace platform. He was set to win the second round on 8 December and become president – before the entire process was brought to a halt by the politically-appointed...

Sudan’s army is celebrating after retaking the presidential palace in Khartoum. It’s a major symbolic victory for the military, which has been battling its former allies, the Rapid Support Forces, for the last two years.

Imamoglu, the popular 53-year-old mayor, was seen as the next opposition party candidate for the Turkish presidency and was expected to be nominated on Sunday. Charges for the arrest, which Imamoglu and his party reject, include terrorism and organized crime. In a statement, Imamoglu's Republican People's Party flatly rejected the charges against the Istanbul mayor, calling the move a coup. The Turkish lira fell to a record low against the dollar and the country's benchmark stock index dropped by as much as 7% following the surprise arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu — a rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip...

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and a popular figure, had basked in the glow of what he often jokingly dubbed his political miracle — the only person to have beaten Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party in not one, but three local elections. On Wednesday, dozens of police officers raided his residence around dawn and detained him for questioning as part of investigations into alleged corruption and terror links. Many see the arrest as part of a broader campaign to undermine the mayor and eliminate a key challenger to Erdogan before the next presidential elections. The...

For 14 years, Syria has been engulfed in a civil war. Until three months ago, dictator Bashar al-Assad controlled the government, but he was overthrown by the Jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist organization. While Assad had many faults he did protect the Christian minority in Syria. However, as noted by commentator Tucker Carlson, as the civil war progressed, “the percentage of Christians in Syria went from ten percent to two percent.”

Where are all the self proclaimed human rights organizations???

The news out of Syria is nothing short of horrific, and it provides a fresh illustration of what a catastrophic failure the Obama strategy ... “hundreds of Christians, including Greek Orthodox, and Alawites have been killed after clashes broke out on Thursday in the Latakia and Tartous regions on Syria’s Mediterranean coast ... That death toll may be a tragic underestimation . ... the death toll could be as high as 1,800, mostly Alawites, but also Christians.” The perpetrators are members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamic jihad group that toppled the Assad regime and took control of Syria several...

Since Thursday, more than 1,000 people—including Christian minorities and Alawites, the sect to which Assad belongs—have been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and local reports. [...] Syria's interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has vowed the new government will respect all communities and affiliations. He is working to gain international legitimacy and has recently met with regional leaders. However, this intense violence could undermine those efforts. Syria has been mired in conflict for more than a decade, [...] The recent fatal clashes mark the worst violence since al-Assad was thrown out, with high casualties reported among religious...

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the closure of the U.S. military base in Alexandroupoli, Greece, according to the Greek newspaper Dimokratia. However, the reports remain unconfirmed by Greek defense officials. The reported decision from Trump may indicate a shift in U.S. military strategy in the region against Russia and has reportedly raised concerns among Greek officials. US military base in Alexandroupoli and Türkiye’s concerns. The U.S. base in the region was a major source of tension between the U.S. and Türkiye. However, U.S. officials repeatedly reassured Türkiye that the U.S. forces’ deployment in the area was not against the...