Free Republic

At least two of the key suspects in the Benghazi terror attack were at one point working with Al Qaeda senior leadership, sources familiar with the investigation tell Fox News. The sources said one of the suspects was believed to be a courier for the Al Qaeda network, and the other a bodyguard in Afghanistan prior to the 2001 terror attacks. The direct ties to the Al Qaeda senior leadership undercut early characterizations by the Obama administration that the attackers in Benghazi were isolated “extremists" -- not Al Qaeda terrorists -- with no organizational structure or affiliation. The head of...

It seems that the rhetoric against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has gone from hateful to downright graphic and violent. The Capitol Police are investigating online threats made by an individual against the Texas senator, a Cruz spokesperson said Friday.The threatening posts were made on Twitter by someone who identifies himself as Troy Gilmore Jr. and uses the Twitter handle @ArmyVet54. He has also listed Cruz’s home address in Houston several times and argued he needs to be “taught a street wise lesson.”“Take down Ted Cruz, at his home,” the person tweeted, listing Cruz’s home address in Houston.“Lets Find Ted...

An Orange County man who had fought with Syrian rebels against the Assad regime was arrested Friday morning as he tried to leave the U.S. with a fake passport to fight for al Qaeda against U.S. soldiers overseas, said authorities. Twenty-four-year-old Sinh Vinh Ngo Nguyen of Garden Grove, also known as Hasan Abu Omar Ghannoum, was stopped at a bus station in Santa Ana, Calif. at 7:30 a.m. by members of the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force and arrested on suspicion of providing material support to al Qaeda. At the courthouse, his mother, Hieu Nguyen, told The Associated Press...

I was born at the beginning of the Second World War into a family of high school teachers who were members of the Communist Party, and therefore were actually part of a vast conspiracy dedicated to the destruction of this country, although they would never have looked at it that way, and so-called liberals would be the first to deny it. n those days, the schools were old fashioned enough that my parents did not use their classrooms to indoctrinate students as tens of thousands of university professors and even more K-12 teachers regularly do today. It is also an...

Details are sketchy at this late hour, but CNN and others are reporting via Twitter that the Libyan PM has been “kidnapped.” revenge for al Libi raid?

Only a few months have passed since President Obama last boasted that al Qaeda is on "the path to defeat." The jihadist groups can work independently, but most are reported to coordinate their carnage with Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's successor as the al Qaeda leader. And it was he, the United States says, who ordered coordinated attacks on American embassies and consulates in August, a plan that prompted the United States to close more than 20 of them. Where is this leading? The State Department says "current information suggests that al Qaeda, its affiliated organizations and other terrorist groups continue...

Al-Qaeda has now welcomed al-Shabab--the group responsible for the Kenya mall attack--into its ranks. Despite the targeted US killing of al-Qaeda leaders, more and more terrorist groups are joining the al-Qaeda network and expanding membership - what led former Australian intelligence analyst Leah Farrell to say, "al-Qaeda's bigger now than it ever has been." Both Osama bin Laden's death and the Arab Spring unrest allowed the al-Qaeda network to grow much stronger.

A federal judge has ordered the release of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner suffering from severe mental illness who has been spent much of his time at a psychiatric ward on the U.S. naval base since he arrived more than 11 years ago. U.S. officials say Idris, who is in his 50s, was captured with al-Qaeda fighters in 2001 by Pakistani forces while attempting to cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Samantha Lewthwaite, the County Down born woman known as the White Widow, evaded capture at the Kenyan shopping mall by smearing blood over her face, security sources there have said.

“We got the heads up that they will be barricaded and specifically asked for an exception for these heroes,” Palazzo told TheDC. “We were denied and told, ‘It’s a government shutdown, what do you expect?’ when we contacted the liaison for the White House.” Palazzo’s office was in touch with the heads of the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior and the Capitol Police. He says all these officials rejected his request to allow the veterans, many of whom are octogenarians and some of whom are in poor health, to attend.

<p>As if the senseless massacre of innocents in Nairobi’s Westgate mall was not horrific enough, reports are surfacing that the Islamic terrorists who seized the mall last weekend tortured, beheaded, raped, and mutilated their victims before killing them. A police doctor who entered the mall after the attack said these reports “are not allegations. Those are f***ing truths.”</p>

The Justice Department announced Monday that it is suing the state of North Carolina for alleged racial discrimination over tough new voter ID rules. The suit claims that the North Carolina statute violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and would seek to have the state subject to federal pre-clearance before making "future voting-related changes." The suit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nashville, Tenn. Attorney General Eric Holder said "by restricting access and ease of voter participation, this new law would shrink, rather than expand, access" to voting. The Justice Department will ask a federal judge...

'A British man who offered himself as a hostage to save the lives of a group of children was today described by colleagues as a 'born leader'. Mitul Shah, 38, a sales executive from London attempted to strike a deal with the terrorists, replacing children with himself, a heroic act which gave several victims vital time to escape. The selfless father did not get through to the gunmen and was shot alongside a number of children in the Kenyan tragedy, leaving behind his wife and two-year-old daughter. Today his employers, the cooking oil company Bidco Oil, and his work colleagues...

In Western news-making and opinion-forming circles, there’s a palpable reluctance to talk about the most noteworthy thing about modern Islamist violence: its barbarism, its graphic lack of moral restraint. This goes beyond the BBC's yellow reluctance to deploy the T-word – terrorism – in relation to the bloody assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya at the weekend. Across the commentating board, people are sheepish about pointing out the historically unique lunacy of Islamist violence and its utter detachment from any recognisable moral universe or human values. We have to talk about this barbarism; we have to appreciate how...

POTISKUM, NIGERIA Suspected Islamic extremists attacked an agricultural college in the dead of night, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in dormitories and torching classrooms, the school's provost said, reporting the latest violence in northeastern Nigeria's ongoing Islamic uprising. As many as 50 students may have been killed in the assault that began at about 1 a.m. Sunday in rural Gujba, Provost Molima Idi Mato of Yobe State College of Agriculture, told The Associated Press. "They attacked our students while they were sleeping in their hostels, they opened fire at them," he said.

Suspected Islamist gunmen have attacked a college in north-eastern Nigeria, killing up to 50 students. The students were shot dead as they slept in their dormitory at the College of Agriculture in Yobe state. North-eastern Nigeria is under a state of emergency amid an Islamist insurgency by the Boko Haram group. Boko Haram is fighting to overthrow Nigeria's government to create an Islamic state, and has launched a number of attacks on schools. Casualty figures from the latest attack vary, but a local politician told the BBC that around 50 students had been killed. The politician said two vanloads of...

For Israel and Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, President Obama’s telephone call with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran on Friday was the geopolitical equivalent of discovering your best friend flirting with your main rival. Though few nations have a greater interest in Mr. Obama’s promise to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, his overtures to Mr. Rouhani were greeted with alarm here and in other Middle East capitals allied with the United States. They worry about Iran’s sincerity, and fear that Mr. Obama’s desire for a diplomatic deal will only buy Iran time to continue a march toward...

The West thought it was winning the battle against jihadist terrorism. It should think again. A FEW months ago Barack Obama declared that al-Qaeda was “on the path to defeat”. Its surviving members, he said, were more concerned for their own safety than with plotting attacks on the West. Yet the inconvenient truth is that, in the past 18 months, despite the relentless pummelling it has received and the defeats it has suffered, al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies have staged an extraordinary comeback. The terrorist network now holds sway over more territory and is recruiting more fighters than at any...

“We knew our Muslim neighbours all our lives,” Georgios says .... we thought they would never betray us. We ate with them. We are one people. Every time there is a conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims, "moderate" Muslims always join the jihadis. We've seen this time and time again all over the world. This is never discussed in the media. Read this.  "Syria crisis: In sacred Maaloula, where they speak the language of Christ, war leads neighbours into betrayal"  The Independent, September 28, 2013 (thanks to Filip) Muslims and Christians had lived together in this town of churches and...

There have been questions about Mohamed Elibiary’s true allegiances for years. He was one of the speakers at a December 2004 conference in Dallas titled “A Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary.” The visionary in question was none other than the founding father of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini.When I questioned him about his appearance at such a conference, Elibiary claimed that he hadn’t known what kind of conference it was going to be, although he didn’t explain why he went ahead and appeared there anyway once he found out. Among those who found this explanation...