Free Republic

A crew of Uzbek wannabe mobsters was busted Wednesday for swiping $4.5 million of cigarettes, high-end cheese and other goodies from warehouses across the Northeast — in a scheme straight out of “Goodfellas,” The Post has learned. Crew leader Murad Khasanov and his cronies allegedly used a modern twist on an old-school mob heist — hacking into computer networks and creating forged invoices to convince warehouse workers to simply hand them the haul without ever needing to point a gun, law enforcement sources said. When they weren’t hitting the road in trucks full of cigarettes, seafood, pricey cheese, meat and...

U.S. officials charged an Uzbek citizen in Idaho with providing bomb-making knowledge and other support to an Islamist militant group, knowing that it would be used in an attack, authorities said on Thursday. Fazliddin Kurbanov, 30, a national of Uzbekistan living legally in Idaho, was arrested in Boise and faces a three-count grand jury indictment in Idaho and a single-count indictment in Utah, prosecutors said. They said Kurbanov provided information and money to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the United States has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The group supports establishing strict Islamic rule in Uzbekistan. Authorities said...

The president of Uzbekistan on Wednesday offered his country's assistance in investigating the deadly terror attack in the lower Manhattan area of New York City. The suspect in the attack was identified as an Uzbek national, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev expressed his condolences to the families of the victims, but the country has been linked to at least three other terrorist incidents over the last year. In April, Uzbek national Rakhmat Akilov drove a truck into pedestrians in Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people. Earlier that same month, Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Russian citizen who was born in Kyrgyzstan...