Free Republic

On the streets of Elmhurst, Queens, where trees rustled in the summer wind and kids played on the sidewalk yesterday, frightened neighbors of Kamran Akhtar were horrified to learn that terror cops in North Carolina want to know whether he was up to no good. "I can't believe he's been arrested," said a woman whose apartment window faces Akhtar's on Ketcham St. "This is so shattering. I have no words for this." The woman's husband described Akhtar - who used the alias Kamran Shaikh in the neighborhood and on his New York State license - as at times aloof, quiet...

ALBANY - A mosque leader charged with helping launder money in a missile plot thought all the weapon talk was a joke, his lawyer said yesterday - but prosecutors were not laughing. Imam Yassin Muhiddin Aref was jailed without bail after prosecutors questioned why his name was found in a notebook in a terrorist camp listed as "Commander Yassin, United States." They also unveiled a photo of the imam's co-defendant watching as an informant shouldered a real surface-to-air missile in the back room of an Albany-area convenience store. That was among the evidence cited by prosecutors in Albany Federal Court...

MEXICO CITY - When some people in Mexico's crime-ridden capital were asked what should be done with kidnappers and rapists, they replied in no uncertain terms. "Why waste money keeping the rats in prison? Just hang them up and let them die slowly," said Francisco Ramirez, 37, a stocky salesman hawking cable TV packages in a downtown shopping mall."Dispose of them," said taxi driver Rafael Galvan, 41, as he cruised past a bustling marketplace. "Garbage like them pollutes the environment."Although Mexicans express opposition to the execution of their countrymen in the United States, many are supporting the notion of applying...

The two men arrested in Albany for allegedly taking part in a terrorist plot were men of God. So friends and neighbors have been telling reporters. Mohammed Mosharref Hossain was a pillar of the local congregation. Yassin Muhiddin Aref was a prayer leader. They called their mosque the House of Peace. The mosque belongs to the North American Islamic Trust, which runs many other mosques in the U.S. The trust is funded mostly by the Saudis. It has other enterprises, too, including a book club. One of its featured offerings is "Jihad: A Commitment to World Peace." Or if you...

MCALLEN - When a Muslim woman with an altered South African passport was arrested at the McAllen airport last month after illegally crossing the Rio Grande, it highlighted fears that terrorists could find easy entry along the porous Southwest border. And while federal prosecutors have not lodged any terrorism-related charges against Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed, 48, who remains jailed on immigration charges, law enforcement officials, as well as veteran Texas congressmen, say they are worried that Ahmed's detention may be the exception to the rule.In particular, they're worried about what they derisively call the Department of Homeland Security's "capture and...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Black-clad police armed with assault rifles moved in to protect America's financial centers on Monday after warnings that al Qaeda bombers might strike, while New Yorkers vowed not to be defeated by terrorists.A day after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge put New York, Washington and other money centers on a code Orange, or ``High'' alert for attack -- the nation's second highest level of readiness -- security was visibly stepped up.Unlike previous alerts, this one specifically mentioned buildings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, Citigroup and the New York Stock Exchange...

PARIS — Despite its periodic crackdowns on the terror network, Iran has served as a refuge for al-Qaida operatives suspected of plotting attacks in Europe and the Middle East and of playing a central role in the Iraqi insurgency, European anti-terror investigators say. Investigations in France, Italy, Spain and other countries since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks point to an increasing presence in Iran of al-Qaida figures, including the suspected masterminds of this year's train bombings in Madrid and last year's car bombings of expatriate compounds in Saudi Arabia. But Iran's complex politics and secretive policies have made it difficult...

The series of sweeps by Border Patrol agents in the Inland Empire and San Diego County appear to be over, but the political fallout may last until the November election. Rep. Joe Baca (D-San Bernardino), a staunch Latino rights advocate, jumped into the political storm by leading a protest of the sweeps — which netted more than 450 suspected illegal immigrants — and helping prompt federal officials to suspend the roundups. Because of his activism, Baca has become a lightning rod of criticism from supporters of the sweeps and from a Southern California Border Patrol union whose members felt the...

T the far end of West 57th Street, across the West Side Highway from the car dealerships and construction sites, a Department of Sanitation pier stretches out into the Hudson River. The garbage trucks parked along the edge of the highway emit a rank, slightly fruity odor that assumes an almost material thickness on warm summer days. Small birds dart among the trucks, pecking at scraps.The pier is not especially picturesque, but it's an ideal perspective from which to contemplate the fate of once-grand schemes discarded into the dustbin of history. It was here, in the 1920's, that the structural...

he New York Police Department, responding to new information that terrorists may be planning to attack corporations or large public institutions in the city, last night advised building managers and corporate security personnel to step up their procedures to guard against vehicles rigged with explosives and against chemical agents placed in ventilation systems.The warning followed meetings on Friday night and yesterday between Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Pasquale J. Damuro, the assistant director in charge of the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to Mr. Kelly's chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne.Mr. Browne said the...

A 450-pound tiger that broke free from a circus caused several traffic pileups on the Jackie Robinson Parkway in Queens Saturday when the beast jumped a car. The tiger apparently broke out of the Cole Bros. circus about two blocks away and sauntered down Myrtle Avenue in Forest Park before wandering onto the parkway, where it apparently jumped on several cars near the avenue on-ramp shortly after noon. Motorists were reportedly too stunned at the sight to panic, but the panic came when quick-responding police officers surrounded the tiger and apparently kept it at bay while telling everyone else to...

GENEVA (AP) -- In a breakthrough Saturday, trade ministers tentatively agreed on a plan to end export subsidies for farm products and cut import duties, a key step toward a comprehensive global accord that advocates say will boost the world economy.The deal, under discussion since 2001, was expected to be approved by all 147 members of the World Trade Organization later Saturday, opening the way for full negotiations to start in September.``Developed countries have recognized that agricultural trade with a heavy subsidy component is not free trade,'' said Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath. But he said that the United States,...

n an echo of the savings and loan industry collapse of the 1980's, the federal agency that insures company pensions is facing a possible cascade of bankruptcies and pension defaults in the airline industry that some experts fear could lead to another multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout. ``The similarities are incredible,'' said George J. Benston, a finance professor at Emory University in Atlanta who has written extensively on the regulatory failures that led to the costly savings and loan bailout. Deposits in savings institutions are, like pensions, guaranteed by a federal insurance program. The savings industry first sickened because changes in market...

hen Chellali Benchellali moved to France 41 years ago his path seemed clear enough. Escaping the misery of his native Algeria, he hoped to get a job, marry, raise a family and blend into the French melting pot.He got part way there. But for the last six months Mr. Benchellali has been in a high-security French prison along with his wife and two of his sons, all accused of helping to plot a chemical attack in the style of Al Qaeda in Europe. A third son has just been released from the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, one...

he American Civil Liberties Union is in turmoil over a promise it made to the government that it would not knowingly hire people whose names appear on watch lists of suspected supporters of terrorism. Those lists are the very type it has strongly opposed in other contexts.In April, for instance, the group filed suit to block the use of "no fly" lists of people barred from air travel or subject to heightened scrutiny, saying the lists were often inaccurate and violated the constitutional rights of some people. The group made the promise not to employ people it knew to be...

As Daniel Gabriel Doyle sat in a car talking to some social workers earlier this week, his pants exploded."A flash of fire went through the car along with a red flare," said Patrick Stanfield, commander of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit Drug Task Force. "It burned his clothes and some of the caseworkers' clothes."Stanfield said the three Walker County social workers apparently caught Doyle at a bad time when they stopped by his home Tuesday. Evidently Doyle, 39, was in the midst of manufacturing a batch of methamphetamine, Stanfield said.Doyle met the social workers at his front door and walked...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy lost steam in the second quarter as consumers hit by high energy costs turned thrifty, notching their smallest increase in spending since the 2001 recession, government data released on Friday showed.U.S. gross domestic product, a measure of total output within the nation's borders, climbed at a modest and weaker-than-expected 3 percent annual rate in the April-June period after an upwardly revised 4.5 percent clip at the start of the year, Commerce Department data showed.Consumer spending rose at a paltry 1 percent rate, a mere shadow of the 4.1 percent jump of the first quarter...

EXICO CITY, July 23 — A special prosecutor filed murder charges today against former President Luis Echevarría and several former government officials and military officers in the killings of student protestors 33 years ago, one of the darkest and most divisive chapters in the shaping of democracy in modern Mexico.The prosecutor, Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, filed evidence against Mr. Echevarría and his aides in killings of at least 25 protesters who were attacked with clubs and chains by government shock troops called the Falcons as they marched peacefully through Mexico City on June 10, 1971, in support of an education unsullied...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A Mexican prosecutor has brought criminal charges against former President Luis Echeverria for a 1971 attack on student protesters that killed at least 25 people, government sources said on Friday.Echeverria, 82, of the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is the first former president in Mexico's modern history to face indictment.Echeverria's lawyer, Juan Velasquez, said a criminal court judge would receive the charges Friday and decide whether to issue an arrest order within 24 hours.The former president had been widely expected to be charged in the June 10, 1971, attack by a paramilitary band on student...

RENTON, July 8 - A federal indictment released this week against a New Jersey Democratic fund-raiser places Gov. James E. McGreevey at the center of an alleged influence-peddling scheme. What it does not do is directly accuse him of any wrongdoing.The indictment referring to Mr. McGreevey as "State Official 1" says the governor used a code word, "Machiavelli," that was established to signal his complicity in a scheme to extort campaign contributions in exchange for help in a land dispute.Mr. McGreevey said this week that his use of the word was innocent - a reference to a book, "The Prince,"...