Free Republic

A Luxembourg-based chief prosecutor, tasked with investigating EU budget-related fraud, will start work next year after getting final approval from the European Parliament on Thursday (5 October). The European Public Prosecutors Office, first envisioned in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, will coordinate national law enforcement efforts with the European police and law agencies Europol and Eurojust, as well as the EU anti-fraud office OLAF. The prosecutor will have the power to coordinate police investigations, freeze and seize assets, and arrest suspects across borders. Until now, only national authorities could investigate and prosecute crimes such as intentional misuse of EU structural funds...

Hungary will defend its tough new laws on non-governmental groups all the way to the European Court as the EU legal action against it was barely worth discussing, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday. The European Commission on Wednesday stepped up procedures against Hungary over restrictions on foreign funding for non-government groups which are seen as a way to target financier George Soros, a longstanding opponent of Orbán. Orbán, a fierce critic of perceived bureaucratic overreach from Brussels, said the document was a “laughing stock” and added his government would treat it as such in its reply. The EU...

A Frenchwoman nicknamed “Mama Jihad”, who traveled to Syria three times to support her jihadist son was handed a 10-year jail sentence on Friday in the latest case against parents of ISIS fighters. Christine Rivière, 51, was convicted of being part of a terrorist organization. She was given the maximum sentence for her “unfailing commitment” to jihad and for helping a number of young women travel to Syria as part of her attempts to find a bride for her son Tyler Vilus, with whom she was described as having an “inseparable relationship”. Vilus traveled to Syria to fight alongside the...

The Irish Government plans to engage with the United States to secure a deal for Irish immigration following Donald Trump’s announcement in September that the deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) program would be dismantled. A new immigration legislation bill is expected to be presented by US Congress by March 2018. President Donald Trump’s controversial move to dismantle DACA, the “dreamers” law protecting the undocumented migrants who were brought to the United States as children, could mean an opportunity for the Irish to secure inclusion into the new legislation. It is planned that the issue of the undocumented will feature...

Gardaí (Irish police) in Galway are investigating an Islamist terror cell in the west of Ireland. The Irish Independent reports that eight men are being monitored in a number of rural locations where local gardaí are keeping a careful eye on them. “The belief is that members of this network are deeply committed to the Islamic State and they are organized,” a Garda source told the paper. The men’s use of Ireland’s mail service, An Post, is being tracked as they’re thought to be using it to send packages on “dummy runs” to fellow Islamists in the Middle East. They’re...

French lawmakers will vote on Tuesday on a tough new counter-terrorism law designed to end the country’s two-year state of emergency, though critics say it will expand police powers at a cost to civil liberties. […] The lower house will vote Tuesday on the bill, which would give authorities the power to place people under house arrest, order house searches and ban public gatherings without the prior approval of a judge.The state of emergency was meant to be temporary but has been extended six times in order to protect major sporting and cultural events, as well as this year’s presidential...

“This is something that should not happen,” Joep van Lieshout, the collective’s founder, said in a telephone interview. “A museum should be an open place for communication. The task of the museum and the press is to explain the work.”

Two people have been killed during a knife attack at a Marseille train station, according to police. The assailant, who was reportedly shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ was shot dead by an army patrol at the scene. The incident took place at the Saint-Charles train station in Marseille on Sunday, when a man attacked passers-by with a knife. One person was killed by the assailant at the scene, while another succumbed a short while after, according to police chief Olivier de Mazières. The attacker, who was reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar,” was shot dead by an army patrol. At least two shots were...

Pope Francis flew to Bologna, Italy, Sunday and met with a large group of migrants and refugees, calling them “warriors of hope” while insisting that nations open broader avenues for immigration. During a full day in Bologna, Francis spent an hour meeting hundreds of migrants personally while posing with them for selfies under light drizzle. Later, the pontiff hosted a luncheon for asylum-seekers and prisoners in the St. Petronius basilica. He even donned a yellow plastic ID bracelet used by asylum-seekers to express his solidarity with them. “Do you know what you are? You are ‘warriors of hope’!” Francis exclaimed...

The presence at the European Parliament this week of a Palestinian who hijacked planes in Europe last century — and whose organization is on the E.U.’s terrorist list — continues to make waves, with some lawmakers and others calling for an investigation. Leila Khaled, a leading figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was a guest speaker at an event at the parliament complex in Brussels on Tuesday night. In 1969 and 1970, Khaled hijacked two aircraft — one Israeli, one American — in European airspace. She was arrested during the second attempt, but was soon...

A disgusting new book made its way to bookshelves in Sweden titled “Grandpa Has Four Wives” and goes to great lengths to normalize Sharia law. The Swedish book, which is titled “Farfar har fyra fruar”, is being printed in both Somali and Swedish and is being promoted to children from ages three to six. The blurb for the book, which was written by Oscar Trimbel, reads: “Asli has never been to Somalia, but now she finally gets to go there with her dad, to meet grandfather and all her grandmothers.”

As a symbol of Islamic separatism, supremacism and misogyny, the Islamic burqa is hard to beat. Outside of the mosque, it's an affront to every Judeo-Christian sensibility to see it on the streets of the West, a giant middle finger to the host culture, and a promise of more Islam to come. So good on Austria for finally taking action: A law prohibiting any kind of full-face covering, known popularly as the “Burqa Ban,” takes effect Sunday in Austria, where the strong support for it portends potential political upheaval in the upcoming national election. Parties campaigning on an anti-migrant message...

A French woman whose jihadist son fought, and is thought to have died, in Syria was given a two-year jail sentence for financing terrorism on Thursday because she sent him money. Nathalie Haddadi, 43, insisted she did not know how her son Belabbas Bounaga spent the money she wired to him and said the conviction was a “double punishment” for a grieving mom. “I have trouble understanding how they can accuse me of financing terrorism,” Haddadi told reporters before hearing the verdict. “I helped my son,” she said, while insisting she had never sent money to Syria. […] Haddadi, a...

President Emmanuel Macron has upped his efforts to persuade French expatriates, whether in the UK or the US, to come home, but many French abroad told The Local they think his appeals are meaningless. During the French president’s trip to the United Nations in New York, he made an appearance in front of hundreds of French citizens who have made a new home for themselves in the US. Standing in front of a huge French tricolore flag, Macron proudly told them France is now “the land of conquest”. This follows an appearance in London prior to his election, where he...

Less than a quarter of Danes oppose a ban on the burqa and niqab, according to a new survey. A majority of the population support banning the two types of Islamic veil in public, according to an opinion poll carried out by Epinion on behalf of broadcaster DR. According to the poll, 62 percent said they support a full ban on wearing the burqa and niqab in public, while 23 percent said the veils should continue to be allowed. 12 percent responded “do not know”, while three percent declined to answer the question. Last week, a Danish model agency announced...

The great and the good internationally have a big interest in the outcome of Ireland’s looming abortion referendum, planned for next year. They want Irish voters to erase from their constitution the so-called Eighth Amendment, which gives the unborn child the same right to life as every other human being. Abortion is only permitted in Ireland when the life of the mother is at real and substantial risk. This amendment was inserted into the constitution following a referendum in 1983 which passed by a two-to-one margin. Ever since then secular liberal opinion has been bent upon overturning that referendum. When...

The EU wants online companies to filter out illegal content, but without a standard definition of what that is or how it should be removed. Critics say the potential for unwarranted censorship sends a dangerous message. Vera Jourova says she’s asking internet companies to do more to stop online hate speech, and that request is not just in her capacity as the European Union’s commissioner for justice. Last year, she chose to close down her own Facebook account following a nonstop stream of online abuse. “It was the highway for hatred and I am not willing to support it,” Jourova...

Only 59 percent of German school children aged 14 or older know that Auschwitz-Birkenau was a Nazi death camp, a study released on Thursday shows. The study by the Körber Institute found that less than half (47 percent) of 14 to 16 year olds had heard of the death camp where over one million people were murdered between 1941-1945. Their peers aged 17 or over were more likely to have heard of Auschwitz, but three in ten still didn’t know what it was. In the population as a whole, 86 percent of Germans know what the camp's purpose was. “We...

A Frenchman who had been on France's terror watchlist after showing signs of having been radicalized to extremist Islam has been accepted into France's police force. The man was placed on the terror watch list in 2012 as a known radical Islamist, and France’s intelligence service DGSI kept him under surveillance for a number of years after being alerted to his behavior, according to French news site RTL. Unaware he was being watched, the man, who has not been named, applied to join the armed forces, but wasn’t successful. He then decided to try to join the French police force....

A former Danish Islamist who seven years ago traveled the Muslim world fueling the uproar over newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad is back in the headlines in Denmark after doing an about-face on the issue. Once a leading critic of the Danish cartoons, which sparked fiery protests in Muslim countries, Lebanese-born Ahmad Akkari now says the Jyllands-Posten newspaper had the right to print them. His unexpected change of heart has received praise from pundits and politicians in recent weeks, though some question his sincerity. It has also disappointed some in the country’s Muslim minority who were deeply offended by...