Free Republic

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami came to New York City on Nov. 8 to attend a U.N. summit as U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies explored new information tying his regime's intelligence services to Sept. 11 and to previous anti-American terrorist attacks, Insight has learned.The information is coming from a variety of sources and shows a clear pattern of operational contacts between the Iranian government and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. These contacts include joint planning of terrorist operations, military training of bin Laden operatives inside Iran and by Iranian personnel in Syria and Lebanon, financial assistance to clandestine terrorist and surveillance ...

SEATTLE (AP) - The federal judge who sentenced an Algerian terrorist to 22 years in prison for attempting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium wildly abused his discretion, said prosecutors who had sought a much longer sentence. Customs agents in Port Angeles, Wash., caught Ahmed Ressam, 38, with explosives in the trunk of his rental car when he drove off a ferry from British Columbia in December 1999. The scare prompted the cancellation of millennium celebrations at Seattle's Space Needle. At Ressam's sentencing last summer, U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour used the opportunity...

FBI: Terror suspect plotted fuel attackAl-Marabh planned to blow up tunnelJail informant reported `martyr' bid JOHN SOLOMONASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - Nabil al-Marabh, who ran a print shop with his uncle in Toronto, plotted to steal a fuel tanker truck and blow it up in one of the heavily travelled tunnels between New Jersey and Manhattan, FBI documents allege. Al-Marabh, 36, was arrested Sept. 19, 2001, in Chicago in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. His arrest prompted an RCMP raid of his uncle's copy shop on Charles St. in Toronto. The U.S. deported him...

"I was close to Chavez, but now he wants me dead." The million dollars from Chavez to Al Qaeda is just the tip of the iceberg in a long series of connections between worldwide terrorist organizations and the Venezuelan strongman, according to one of those who knows most about Chavez and the inside of his presidential palace: His former personal pilot. Major Juan Diaz Castillo is the man who flew the equivalent of Air Force One. In this interview with Venezuela's weekly news-magazine Zeta, he reveals formerly unpublished details of the operations that Chavez had him organize. By Maria Angelica...

Israeli officials have been holding talks in Jordan with Syrian opposition officials “in advance of a possible Israeli-U.S. operation in Syria to protect the Golan Heights,” Western intelligence sources reported Tuesday, Jan. 1. There was no further information about this operation or how rebel commanders were involved in military plans “to protect the Golan Heights.” Altogether, the goings-on on the Israeli and Jordanian borders with Syria are in deep hush. But European intelligence sources, some of them French and Russian, reveal nightly clashes taking place between US, Jordanian, Israeli special forces and Syrian rebels, on the one hand, and Syrian...

A New Year's CIA strike in northern Pakistan killed two top al-Qaeda terrorists long sought by the United States, including the man believed to be behind September's deadly suicide bombing at a Marriott hotel in the Pakistani capital, U.S. counterterrorism officials told The Washingon Post today. Agency officials determined in recent days that among the dead in the Jan. 1 missile strike were a Kenyan national who used the name Usama al-Kini and who was described as al-Qaeda's chief of operations in Pakistan and his lieutenant, identified as Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, the sources said. Both men were associated with...

Posted on Tue, Aug. 24, 2004 Swiss Accuse Group of Backing al-Qaida JONATHAN FOWLER Associated Press GENEVA - Swiss investigators have found evidence that suspected members of a group backing al-Qaida were supplying fake documents to enable collaborators to enter Switzerland and other European countries illegally, the supreme court said Tuesday. The Federal Tribunal said one suspect, whose name was not released, was found to have links to both an unidentified al-Qaida recruiter who sent volunteers to the terror group's training camps and another unidentified individual convicted of terrorism offenses in France. The support group also provided cell phone numbers...

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com , show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders. One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support...

In Munich on September 16, 1972, 10 days after the massacre of the Israeli athelets, a Nazi fascist rally, "the First National European Congress of Youth," was held. The 600 delegates cheered Black September to the rafters. Delegates also extolled Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian who killed Senator Robert Kennedy.

Last October, a well-known Portland antifa militant was killed under mysterious circumstances after leaving a pub popular with far-left extremists. Sean Daniel Kealiher, 23, was killed near the Cider Riot pub after being hit by a car that had been fired upon with live rounds. His friends dragged his body away and did not call the police. Kealiher’s death immediately rippled throughout Portland and beyond, leading both the far-left and even establishment Democrat leaders to mourn publicly. A GoFundMe for his funeral raised thousands. And while he was lionized in the press as a murdered “anti-fascist activist” and even called...

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, reports to Congress 4 times a year about how things are going in Afghanistan. The answer is not well. Not well at all. SIGAR is a relic of the Afghan war, and I was not aware it was still a thing, although I am glad it is. Given the hundreds of billions of dollars we poured into that country, somebody with a conscience should be rooting out all the corruption and incompetent actions that took place and keep tabs on what our blood and treasure bought. UN team identified up to...

A UN Security Council report has found that since the Taliban resumed ruling Afghanistan in 2021, the country has returned to being a shelter for terrorist organizations.. The al-Qaeda terrorist organization is having a resurgence in Afghanistan under the ruling Taliban, setting up eight new training camps alongside five madrasas, Islamic educational institutions, around the country, a report from the UN Security Council in late January has revealed. The report said that the training camps are located in various provinces, including Ghazni, Laghman, Parwan, and Uruzgan. It also listed sites used by al-Qaeda to move its operatives in and out...

Members of the anti-Israel lobby have staged yet another insurrection at the United States Capitol building. Pro-Hamas activists flooded the rotunda led by Linda Sarsour, a far-leftist agitator, to call for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza. The incident was reminiscent of an earlier insurrection held by anti-Israel elements in October.Police arrested “roughly 60” anti-Israel protesters inside the Capitol Rotunda Tuesday after a group led by controversial activist Linda Sarsour staged an illegal rally in the iconic venue.“Not another nickel! Not another dime! No more money for Israel’s crimes!” chanted members of the group, holding “Stop Arming Israel” signs.It...

The FBI has repeatedly door knocked the home of The Publica’s investigative journalist, Sarah Fields, demanding that she sit down and talk with them about her coverage of an alleged Hamas training camp on the US-Mexico border.Fields, a journalist based in East Texas, revealed on X (formerly known as Twitter) that FBI agents had come to her home on October 17th, completely unannounced. (snip) While she noted that several outlets had claimed the story was false, Fields said that her sources suggested that it had instead been shut down some time between 2021 and 2022.When Fields pressed for more details,...

A “radical” Jordanian national living in Texas was allegedly plotting an attack on Houston’s Jewish community before he was arrested on gun charges. Sohaib Abuayyash, 20, had been studying how to build bombs and posted about his support for killing Jews, federal officials claim. “He has viewed specific and detailed content posted by radical organizations on the internet, including lessons on how to construct bombs or explosive devices,” FBI Director Chris Wray told the Senate Homeland Security Committee, though he declined to identify Abuayyash by name. “And that defendant has made statements to others that support the killing of individuals...

Does an obscure document, hidden among the hundreds of documents released recently from Iraq and Afghanistan, provide evidence linking Al Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef to the Oklahoma City attack on the MurrahBuilding? The Arabic-language handwritten document, numbered AFGP-2002-801138, and available at http://www.ctc.usma.edu/aq/AFGP-2002-801138-Orig.pdf , contains a series of pages that were written in what appears to be some sort of daily planner. The daily planner appears to be a standard daily calendar/agenda book, containing a daily calendar for the year 2000. The dates within the calendar are in English, and have the Islamic dates for each day as well. The planner...

SNIPPET: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg is among four people who have been arrested on suspicion of Syria-related terrorism offences, police have said. Mr Begg, 45, who was held by the US authorities for almost three years, was arrested earlier with two other men and a woman in the West Midlands. He was detained on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas." SNIPPET: "Mr Begg was arrested in Hall Green in Birmingham. The other people arrested - a 36-year-old man from Shirley, a 44-year-old woman and her son, 20, both from Sparkhill - are being...

The Bush Administration has obtianed information that North Korea possesses at least three nuclear bombs as well as an undermined amount of fissile material.The officials said the material is being stored in underground bunkers kept off limits to both the United States or the International Atomic Energy Agency.Geostrategy Direct.com Backgrounder:Compiled by Bill Gertz U.S. Downgrades Saudi Arabia as secure oil sourceIran training Palestinians to use shoulder-fired missilesReconnaissance Photos Show Iraq Converting UN trucks to launchers for artillery, missilesSecret agenda for Arab summit is funding for the Palentinian war

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) continues to occupy a special place in the pantheon of Syrian terror surrogates. Of all the major Palestinian and Lebanese paramilitary groups sponsored by Damascus, the PFLP-GC exercises the least strategic and operational autonomy. While the perks of this servitude are considerable (it is the only group to have received tanks from the Syrian government), so too are the limitations (its lack of independence has precluded the growth of a strong popular following). Despite its relatively weak presence in the West Bank and Gaza, the PFLP-GC has played a vital...

Speaking at the White House, Trump lamented that US involvement in the country for 18 years, which he described as more of a "police force," is "ridiculous," and repeated a claim that the US "could win that war in a week if we wanted to" but that he does not "want to kill 10 million people, 10 million Afghans ... because that's what would have to happen and I'm not looking to do that." Trump said the US is "bringing some of our troops back but we have to have a presence." The area "does seem to be the Harvard...