Free Republic

Pavel Lerner, a blockchain expert, was taken hostage by masked gunmen on December 26Kiev: Kidnappers in Ukraine have released an employee at a United Kingdom-registered cryptocurrency exchange after getting more than $1 million (Dh3.67 million) in bitcoins as ransom, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister told Reuters on Friday. Pavel Lerner, a leading analyst and blockchain expert, was abducted by unknown masked people on December 26, according to a statement by his company, EXMO Finance, on its website. “This is the first such case in Ukraine linked to bitcoins,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, said...

Among the hazards of public life are the photo ops that come back to haunt you. Our snap-happy Prime Minister is a case in point. Since the tropical vacation with his old friend, the Aga Khan, that cheery photo of the two of them on Parliament Hill has been rerun a thousand times. Whenever people see the picture they remember the private island, and thus it will ever be. Now there's the Boyle family. If you didn't know the backstory, the photos of their meeting with Justin Trudeau are positively heartwarming. After all, these are the hostages who were dramatically...

Full title: Judicial Watch: State Department Asked Hillary Clinton Lawyers to Delete Specific Classified Records, Return Paper Copies (Washington, DC) - Judicial Watch today released a letter from the Department of State to Hillary Clinton's lawyers that includes a list of classified records to be either deleted or returned to the State Department. The documents were produced under court order in a FOIA lawsuit for all of Clinton emails and for records about her email practices ( Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)). The June 30, 2015, letter from Secretary of State for Management Patrick F....

October 7, 2016. It’s been almost one year since Dr. Andrew Brunson was unjustly imprisoned without charges in Turkey. Imagine spending a year in a Turkish prison as a hostage. Unfortunately, most Americans have no idea what is really happening in Turkey. Turkey has long been an ally of the United States, but has chosen to complicate and weaken its relationship with the United States and other free nations of the world through its increasingly oppressive policies. On August 25, 2017, the Turkish government issued two new emergency decrees. Article 74 of decree 694 states that “with the exclusion of...

SEOUL/TORONTO — North Korea freed a Canadian pastor serving a life sentence on humanitarian grounds, the official KCNA news agency said on Wednesday, just hours after the United States warned it would counter any threat from the North with "fire and fury." There was no clear connection between the release of Hyeon Soo Lim and the heightened rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang. Canadian officials said on Tuesday a delegation led by the country's national security adviser had gone to North Korea to discuss Lim's case. Lim, who served in one of the largest churches in Canada, had been sentenced to...

Women are burning their burqas and men shaving off their beards in a show of defiance against ISIS after escaping from the terrorist group's stronghold in Syria. Civilians in Raqqa tore off their traditional dress and set it alight after being liberated from the city on Thursday. And some of the men immediately began shaving off their facial hair in a move to 'spite' Islamic State. Strict dress codes were implemented by ISIS, requiring women to wear long, black robes over their dresses and cover their faces almost entirely with black burqas. One woman, who had exposed her face, refusing...

Christian Assyrians have been targeted repeatedly through history — and found themselves under attack again by ISIS forces in Syria. "They're coming! They're coming!" On that day, Feb. 23, 2015, a new page in the tragedy of the Middle East's Christians was written on the banks of the Khabur River, in northeastern Syria. Armed with heavy weaponry and armored vehicles, ISIS fighters swept down from the Mount Abdulaziz region and stormed local Assyrian Christian villages, sending panic-stricken residents fleeing for their lives. Thousands sought shelter in the area's major cities, Al-Hassakeh and Al-Qamishli. The fighting lasted several hours. Two local...

When 22-year-old American student Otto Warmbier was released from North Korean captivity last week after being held as a war criminal for 17-months, his family praised President Trump for getting him out. "When Otto was first taken we were advised by the past administration to take a low profile while they worked to obtain his release. We did so without result," Otto's father, Fred Warmbier, said during a press conference in Ohio last week. "Earlier this year, Cindy and I decided the time for strategic patience was over. It is my understanding that Ambassador Yun and his team, at the...

Otto Warmbier, the American student who was imprisoned in North Korea for more than 17 months and was returned home to Ohio last week, has died, his family said Monday. "It is our sad duty to report that our son, Otto Warmbier, has completed his journey home," his family said in part in a statement. "Surrounded by his loving family, Otto died today at 2:20 p.m."

Full Title.................BREAKING NEWS: Holiday hotspot in Mali is stormed by gunman who have 'taken hostages in resort popular with Western tourists'.........An African holiday resort popular with Western tourists has reportedly been stormed by gunmen. Malian troops and soldiers from France's Bakhane counter-terrorist force headed to the Le Campement facility, on the edge of Bamako, where smoke was also seen billowed high into the air. It is not yet known if there are any casualties from the incident.

Dennis Rodman lands in North Korea on June 13, the same day that the North Koreans suddenly free American college student Otto Warmbier. Coincidence? The State Department says so. A spokesman said that Rodman had nothing to do with Warmbier’s release. There’s no evidence that Rodman helped secure the release of Warmbier, a University of Virginia college student sentenced in 2016 to hard labor for ripping down a propaganda poster. The Secretary of State’s initial statement on Warmbier’s release made no mention of Rodman. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced June 13 that Warmbier was being released. Sadly, though,...

– University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier has been medically evacuated from North Korea in a coma after being detained for 17 months, his parents told The Washington Post on Tuesday. Warmbier, 22, is due to arrive home in Cincinnati on Tuesday evening, having been evacuated through a U.S. military base in Sapporo, Japan. Warmbier has been in a coma for more than a year, since shortly after his last public appearance during his trial in Pyongyang in March 2016. His release was announced Tuesday morning in Washington by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Tillerson did not discuss Warmbier’s medical...

North Korea has released Otto Warmbier, a U.S. university student who has been held captive there since January 2016, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.

WASHINGTON — An American kidnapped two years ago in Yemen while helping coordinate aid for Unicef and the Red Cross also had a second, secret role: He was shipping materials for elite military commandos under a clandestine contract his employer had with the Pentagon. The arrangement with Special Operations forces has never been made public. {snip} Mr. Darden’s work offers a rare look into the shadowy world of military contractors that operate in lawless war zones like Yemen, Somalia and Libya. But arrangements like the one Transoceanic had with Special Operations forces can cast suspicion over aid workers, potentially putting...

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea has announced it detained another American citizen over unspecified hostile acts against the country. North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said Sunday that Kim Hak Song had worked for the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology before he was held on Saturday. North Korea on Wednesday announced the detention of an accounting instructor at the same university, Kim Sang Dok, for "acts of hostility aimed at overthrowing the country." The KCNA didn't say whether the two cases are connected.

A former congressional information technology (IT) aide allegedly threatened to have his stepmother’s Pakistani relatives kidnapped if she talked to U.S. law enforcement authorities, according to court documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) Investigative Group. “Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful and if I ever call the police again, [he] will … kidnap my family members back in Pakistan,” Awan’s stepmother, Samina Gilani, claimed in the documents filed April 14 in Fairfax County, Va., in the case of Americo Financial Life and Annuity Insurance Company v. Abid A. Awan and Samina Ashraf Gilani. Imran Awan...

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal sent messages to Arab security prisoners, promising the prisoners are at the top of the priority list and that the Hamas leadership will do everything to ensure their release. "It will not be long before the fighting forces will force Israel to pay the price and to release the Palestinian prisoners," Mashaal said, hinting there may be a new swap similar to the 2011 Shalit deal. In an interview with Al-Quds, Mashaal called for complete unity between the Arab terrorist organizations, both in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and in other places as well. He also called...

A U.S. charity worker returned home after President Trump and aides quietly worked to secure her release from from an Egyptian jail after nearly three years, according to the Washington Post. Aya Hijazi, a U.S. citizen, her Egyptian husband Mohamed Hassanein and four other humanitarian workers were freed after weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiation by the Trump administration.

An Egyptian American charity worker who was imprisoned in Cairo for three years and became the global face of Egypt’s brutal crackdown on civil society returned home to the United States late Thursday after the Trump administration quietly negotiated her release. President Trump and his aides worked for several weeks with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi to secure the freedom of Aya Hijazi, 30, a U.S. citizen, as well as her husband, Mohamed Hassanein, who is Egyptian, and four other humanitarian workers. Trump dispatched a U.S. government aircraft to Cairo to bring Hijazi and her family to Washington. Hijazi, who...

MISSOULA - Captain (Chaplain) Matthew Christensen, a 1992 graduate of Flathead High School, was awarded the Soldier's Medal last week for his actions that resulted in saving the lives of two soldiers. When Christensen went to counsel a soldier who was having a hard time, he didn’t realize it would escalate into a dangerous hostage situation. Christensen spent much of the night counseling the soldier. Later, the soldier's roommate and another chaplain showed up at the barracks. Things got worse. The soldier called some family members, cursing them for abusive situations in the past. Christensen said, "And then he just...