Free Republic

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama was quick to blame the bankruptcy of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers on Republicans’ “failed philosophy”. Obama’s September 15 comments were repeated throughout the media--yet reporters have not noted Obama’s glaring conflict of interest—the Lehman debt owed to a bank owned by the financier who loaned millions of dollars to Tony Rezko.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has tapped a controversial lawyer who defended an al Qaeda terrorist and a radical anti-Israel campus leader at Columbia for a “high-ranking” position at City Hall, The Post has learned. Ramzi Kassem, who is also a law professor at City University of New York and a member of Mamdani’s transition team for legal affairs, is the top candidate for Chief Counsel, the most important advisory role in the mayor’s office, according to a source close to the transition team. Kassem, 47, was one of the attorneys who defended Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment...

A federal judge Thursday ordered the detention of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and eight others in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center that killed 85 people, the judge's office said. A special prosecutor sought the order, alleging that the worst terrorist attack on Argentine soil was orchestrated by leaders of the Iranian government and entrusted to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. Iran's leading diplomatic envoy in Buenos Aires, Mohsen Baharvand, told The Associated Press that his government would oppose any efforts to detain Rafsanjani or other Iranian nationals. Baharvand, Iran's charge d'affaires, said the case...

Mahmoud Khalil is vowing to press on in his fight for the pro-Palestinian cause after he was released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention over the weekend. His arrest three months ago “felt like a kidnapping” as officers would not produce a warrant or give him any information, Khalil, a green card holder and the former lead negotiator for Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment, said in his first interview since his release with The New York Times. In the airport when he returned to New York City on Saturday, he was greeted by supporters whom he told he would...

Politics Judge orders release of Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil from ICE detention By Updated on: June 20, 2025 / 3:13 PM EDT / CBS News A federal judge in New Jersey on Friday ordered that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil must be released from detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as his immigration proceedings play out. During a hearing before U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz, Khalil's attorneys asked him to free Khalil from detention or transfer him to New Jersey. Farbiarz agreed, determining that Khalil is not a threat to the community, not a flight risk and that his detention...

Costa Rica authorities handed over a Syrian national to the United States after his arrest last year on charges of running a human smuggling operation. The man, known by the last name Maklad, led a group that moved migrants from Egypt, Venezuela, and Guatemala through New Mexico between 2022 and 2025, according to Osvaldo Ramírez, who heads Interpol operations at the Judicial Investigation Agency. Officers captured the 39-year-old in May 2025 as he crossed into the country from Nicaragua. Ramírez shared details in a video briefing, confirming the transfer went smoothly. Maklad escaped the U.S. after agents there broke up...

A teenager died after she was tied up and thrown into a swamp to drown in an honour killing because her Western behaviour shamed her family, according to prosecutors in the Netherlands. Ryan Al Najjar's brothers have now been put on trial for her murder, while her father, who is accused of ordering the killing, fled the country to return to Syria. Mohamed, 23, and Muhanad Al Najjar, 25, are charged with taking part in the horrific crime against their 18-year-old sister, whose body was found gagged with her hands bound behind her back, ankles taped together, and submerged in...

Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani recently celebrated his wedding to his artist wife at a lavish compound owned by his family in Uganda. Mamdani, 33, shocked the political world when he defeated Andrew Cuomo to win the Democrat nomination to run the Big Apple, campaigning on far left policy and drawing controversy for his anti-Israel views. The state assemblyman recently took a break from the campaign to visit Uganda, where he was born and spent the first few years of his life being raised by his filmmaker mother Mira Nair and academic father Mahmood Mamdani. The far-left...

Assem Hammoud, 31, the architect of a plan to bomb New York tunnels, was trained and directed by Al Qaida to strike by the end of this year, U.S. and Lebanese officials said. "Security forces were able to track e-mails and conversations on an extremist Islamic website used to recruit terrorists," the Lebanese Internal Security Forces said in a statement. Hammoud, nicknamed the "Andalusian prince" in an apparent reference to Islamic emirs who once ruled Spain, was trained in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein Hilwe near Sidon, the ISF statement said. Ein Hilwe has long been a hotbed of...

A South American airline issued a memo to its employees Monday to be on the lookout for a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was resettled in Uruguay after being freed by the U.S. and has since vanished. *snip* The alert about Syrian native Abu Wa’el Dhiab adds to a growing mystery about his whereabouts. The Uruguayan authorities have insisted for weeks that he’s visiting neighboring Brazil and that as a refugee he is entitled to leave Uruguay. However, Brazilian authorities have said there is no record of Dhiab entering the country.

A Brazilian airline is asking its employees to be on the lookout for a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was resettled in Uruguay. The alert about Syrian native Abu Wa’el Dhiab adds to a growing mystery about his whereabouts. Uruguayan authorities have insisted for weeks that he is visiting neighboring Brazil and that as a refugee he is entitled to leave Uruguay. …

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Trump urged Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to sign the Abraham Accords in a previously unplanned meeting on Wednesday, one day after lifting all sanctions on the Middle Eastern country. The two leaders met on the sidelines of a Gulf Cooperation Council gathering in Riyadh, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan phoning into the conversation. Syria currently doesn’t recognize Israel’s statehood, and the Abraham Accords were just one of Trump’s requests to Syria in an effort to normalize relations. Trump also told the Syrian leader to make all foreign terrorists leave Syria, deport Palestinian terrorists, help...

Prime Minister and Defense Minister announce Israel has struck a target close to the presidential palace in Damascus: "We will not permit any threat to the Druze community." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced early Friday morning that Israel had struck a target close to the presidential palace in Damascus. "This is a clear message to the Syrian regime. We will not permit Syrian troops to move south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community," they said in a joint statement...

Venezuela’s Tarek El-Aissami The Americas Report | Oct 03, 2008  By Nicole Ferrand [...] Mr. El - Aissami is a Venezuelan national of Syrian descent who, before becoming Minster of Interior and Justice, occupied the position of Deputy Interior Minister for Public Security. His father, Carlos Aissami, is the head of the Venezuelan branch of the Iraqi Baath political party. Before the invasion of Iraq, he held a press conference in which he described himself as a Taliban and called Osama Bin Laden, "the great Mujahedeen, Sheik Osama bin Laden." Tarek's great-uncle Shibli el-Aissami was a prominent ideologist and...

A documentary film released this weekend in more than 100 movie theatres across America explores the processes by which antisemitism exploded across university campuses, in street demonstrations and on social media following the Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on October 7, 2023. It shows how throughout this vast uprising, Hamas have been celebrated as freedom fighters rather than terrorists. The film’s director, Wendy Sachs, has also noted that this tsunami of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred wasn’t a spontaneous eruption of feeling. It was orchestrated. The Hamas narrative of murderous lies has been embedded into campuses by the vicious anti-Israel group, Students...

"The terrorists are killing everyone. Children, women, teenagers, old people — just killing," a Syrian Christian said in a video posted to X today. "Please, please, please — the media is not showing you anything." The slaughter isn't limited to Christians, as members of the Alawite faith are also being murdered by the forces in control of most of post-Assad Syria. To be fair, the whole sordid mess seems to have kicked off last week as Assad regime dead-enders (the Assad family is Alawite, a syncretic religion with Muslim, Christian, and other elements) with attacks that "included killings and mass...

Far-left filmmaker Michael Moore has complained that America is going to lose the incredible talents of millions of illegal aliens. In a Substack post on Tuesday, Moore said that Trump’s mass deportations may result in the U.S. losing someone who could find a cure for cancer or stop an asteroid from hitting earth. “Who’s really being removed by ICE tonight?” he wrote. “The child who would’ve discovered the cure for cancer in 2046? The 9th-grade nerd who would’ve stopped that Astroid [sic] that’s gonna hit us in 2032?” Moore used the example of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the son of...

A child has been stabbed to death and four others injured in a mass stabbing attack in Villach, Austria today. The suspect is a Syrian migrant. He reportedly shouted, “Allahu Akbar.” When police responded he smiled and put up the one finger salute that many Muslims do. The deadly mass stabbing follows the deadly mass ramming attack in Munich, Germany two days earlier by an Afghan migrant suspect. Deadly Islamic attacks are a regular occurrence in European countries with large Muslim immigrant and migrant populations. ... We keep seeing this happen. Children murdered, women harassed and raped. Roads taken over...

Israel’s Army Radio reported Thursday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began preparing plans for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear sites after destroying nearly 90% of Syria’s air defense capabilities, which had formerly protected Iran. Army Radio military correspondent Doron Kadosh reported on air that Israel had destroyed 86% of Syria’s surface-to-air missile capability, among 500 other sites that the IDF had targeted since the fall of the Assad regime Sunday. Kadosh elaborated, in a post on X, that Israel had used 1800 munitions in the attack on Syrian weapons — munitions that had been intended for other purposes, but...

Syrian rebels who overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad on Sunday are reportedly executing their opponents, imposing Islamic sharia law, and threatening non-Muslim minorities, including the Kurdish population in the north. Videos are circulating on social media showing Syrian rebels killing people associated with the regime — some of whom may have been part of the state security services, and others who appear to have been ordinary employees. The New York Times reported Tuesday: Islamic State forces on Tuesday killed 54 people in the Homs region in central Syria who had been part of the Syrian government’s military and fled...