Free Republic

A Guantanamo Bay detainee who was accused of trying to join the 9/11 hijackers has been sent back to Saudi Arabia for ‘treatment for mental illness,’ the Biden Administration said Monday. Mohammad Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani was sent from the famed prison to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where he will receive treatment at a psychiatric facility. “After two decades without trial in U.S. custody, Mohammed will now receive the psychiatric care he has long needed in Saudi Arabia, with the support of his family,” law professor at the City University of New York Ramzi Kassem, who represented al-Qahtani, said. “Keeping...

We think we know how he did it, but we're not going to explain it yet. Don't want to give others ideas. Meanwhile, we've temporarily disabled the login program while John makes some changes tonight to try to block bots. Hopefully, he'll have the programming complete tonight. Sorry about the mess, but looks like the mods have most of it deleted.

A Lebanese journalist detained on suspicion he participated in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 is back home in Beirut after authorities determined they had the wrong man.

To the casual moralist you don’t slap sanctions on a country on its knees minding its own business. Never mind the country has a government of looters who campaign on a ticket of lies about Israel and fete Hamas terror leaders and a plane highjacker on home soil. South Africa is not neighbouring Zimbabwe, on which President Trump already slapped sanctions, although the Cato Institute warned him that South Africa is on the Zimbabwean road to hell. (Hyperlink needed). For now the country remains afloat. The problem (call it the exemplar effect) is somewhat different.. .....

An Afriqiyah Airways A320 with around 120 people on board has just landed in Malta after it was hijacked. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat tweeted he is informed of a potential hijack situation of an internal Libyan flight diverted to Malta. Security and emergency operations were standing by. According to reports received by Times of Malta, the plane was on an internal flight from Sebha to Tripoli in Libya. A total of 111 passengers and a crew of seven are on board. The reports indicated that one hijacker is on board. He is claiming to be in possession of a hand...

BREAKING: A man who claimed to be wearing a suicide belt when he hijacked an EgyptAir passenger plane and forced it to land in Cyprus Tuesday morning is “not a terrorist,” but a lovestruck “idiot,” Egypt’s foreign ministry said as authorities worked to gain the release of the last seven passengers and crewmembers still aboard. The man forced the EgyptAir Airbus A320, bound from Alexandria to Cairo, to land at Larnaca airport on Tuesday morning and demanded a meeting with his ex-wife, according to reports. He released most of the passengers, but kept three as well as four members of...

An imprisoned man known as the "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 terror attacks is asking a South Florida federal judge for a transfer to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The request is part of a rambling, handwritten letter filed Wednesday in Miami federal court by Zacarias Moussaoui. He is serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2005 to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill Americans.

At 5:00pm Pacific Time, Ethiopian Flight 702, a Boeing 767-300 was flying over Sudan when it started squawking 7500. The transponder code, is supposed to indicate a “hijacking.” (snip) The flight, operating from Addis Abba to Rome has been confirmed by Rome Airport not to have arrived yet. As of now, it is over France, but has recently taken a steep northeast heading. Based on flight tracking, it appears the plane is headed to Geneva. Emergency crews are standing by.

Captured American fugitive George Wright will claim a new identity to prevent the U.S. from extraditing him, his lawyer said Saturday. Wright, 68, became a Portuguese citizen, called Jose Luis Jorge dos Santos, in 1991 after marrying a Portuguese woman, lawyer Manuel Luis Ferreira told The Associated Press. Ferreira said in an interview that Wright's new identity was given to him by West African country Guinea-Bissau when it granted him political asylum in the 1980s and was accepted by Portugal. The U.S. is trying to extradite Wright to serve the remainder of his 15- to 30-year sentence for a 1962...

Neighbors of the convicted killer who escaped a New Jersey prison in 1970, then allegedly hijacked a U.S. airliner two years later, told The Associated Press that the fugitive lived in an idyllic Portuguese hamlet near a beautiful beach, married a Portuguese woman and has two children in their 20s. (snip) Back in 1962, Wright and three others were involved in a string of armed robberies that lead to the shooting death of a gas station owner in Wall, N.J., an FBI statement read.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A 1970s militant who escaped from a murder sentence in New Jersey and carried out one of the most brazen hijackings in U.S. history was captured in Portugal after more than 40 years as a fugitive when the case suddenly unraveled after police matched his fingerprint to a resident ID card, authorities said Tuesday.

After more than three decades in United States prisons — a term punctuated by a brief escape and recapture — a 62-year-old Croatian independence fighter was returned to his native country on Thursday, having served his time for a 1976 hijacking and a bombing that killed a police officer. The fighter, Zvonko Busic, led a group that planted a bomb at Grand Central Terminal that later exploded, killing a city police officer, Brian J. Murray. Mr. Busic left the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind., boarded a plane in Chicago and touched down in Zagreb about 2:20 p.m. on...

OGDEN -- A report of a fireball in the sky and a veiled threat from a mysterious man in a dark suit could aid a lawyer's dogged quest to prove a former Weber State ROTC instructor was infamous skyjacker D.B. Cooper. Galen Cook, a Spokane, Wash., attorney says he's found perhaps the only eyewitness to Cooper's daring parachute escape from a Boeing 727 more than 38 years ago into the dark abyss of the Pacific Northwest. Cook, who has been pursuing the Cooper case for more than two decades and is writing a book about his investigation, believes a woman...

A Sudanese man used a knife from the in-flight meal to threaten crew members after the plane left Turkish airspace and demanded that the flight be diverted to Jerusalem, the official said.

MEXICO CITY -- A 44-year-old Bolivian drug addict and alcoholic who describes himself as a church minister was the sole person responsible for the brief hijacking Wednesday of a commercial jetliner, a Mexican official said. The suspect -- Josmar Flores Pereira -- told authorities he hijacked the Boeing 737 jet because the date -- September 9, 2009, or 9/9/9, and 666 reversed -- held some significance for him, said Genaro Garcia Luna, the secretary for public safety. "He said that because of that divine reference he wanted to alert Mexico City of an earthquake," Garcia told reporters. Flanked by two...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House. Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui's previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions. Moussaoui testified Monday he lied to investigators when arrested...

One of the Palestinians who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and killed an American Jewish passenger in 1985 has been released after more than 23 years in jail, officials said Thursday. Youssef Magied al-Molqui left prison in Palermo, Sicily, on Wednesday and was transferred to a holding center for immigrants in nearby Trapani while officials work to expel him, police in the Sicilian capital said.

A team of scientists is in town, helping the Seattle FBI do something it hasn't been able to do on its own. They're trying to find new evidence that will lead to one of the Northwest's most notorious fugitives. Tom Kaye's casting with cash, which tells you this is ordinary fisherman on the banks of the Columbia River. Weird science - that's probably the better way to describe the fishing expedition that's going on this week near Vancouver. Kaye is hoping his experiment can help reel in one of the biggest catches of all: the Northwest skyjacker known only as...

Asha Ali Abdille was remanded in custody to a pre-trial conference in the High Court at Christchurch on February 13, when the trial date may be set. The 34-year-old Somali woman, faces a charge of hijacking, taking an offensive weapon onto an aircraft, and four charges of wounding or injuring with reckless disregard for safety. When the armed offenders squad members escorted Abdille away from the plane they handcuffed her and made her kneel down. They found a knife in her shoe ... Detective Donald Rayne, said he first noticed a trail of blood from the steps of the plane...

An intimate look at one 9/11 hijacker.