Free Republic

More than 60,000 Chaldeans live in El Cajon, the largest concentration in the U.S. outside of Detroit. A San Diego-area nonprofit running an "underground railroad" is trying to save "as many people as possible" from turmoil in Iraq by finding them refuge in Southern California, and it has tens of thousands of Christian Iraqis on its waiting list. Mark Arabo, a first generation Iraqi-American born and raised east of San Diego, founded the Minority Humanitarian Foundation (MHF) in 2014 after he grew tired of waiting for a response from Washington officials to the crisis created by Islamic State militants,...

Few answers appear in the probe of students in Netherlands suspected of ties to Al Qaeda AMSTERDAM — The guys around the scuba school laughingly called them the "Al Qaeda Diving Team." But for law enforcement officials, it was no joke. Late last year, Dutch counter-terrorism agents investigating a possible Al Qaeda recruitment cell grew interested in the school because a man suspected of recruiting terrorists had become a certified diver and studied to be an instructor there. Iraqi-born Kasim Ali was one of between 50 and 150 Muslim men who had taken classes in recent years with the same...

A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told US interrogators the meeting never happened, according to US officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the US in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague in the Czech Republic, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. US officials caution that Ani may have been lying...

SANLIURFA, Turkey — When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join the Islamic State, he did so assuming he would become a part of the group’s promised Islamist utopia, which has lured foreign jihadists from around the globe. Instead, he found himself being supervised by an Iraqi emir and receiving orders from shadowy Iraqis who moved in and out of the battlefield in Syria. When Abu Hamza disagreed with fellow commanders at an Islamic State meeting last year, he said, he was placed under arrest on the orders of a masked Iraqi man who had sat silently through...

A Texas teen has been arrested for fatally shooting an Iraqi refugee watching his first-ever snowfall, police said. Nykerion Nealon, 17, was arrested early Friday after gunning down Ahmed al-Jumaili outside his Dallas apartment complex March 4, Maj. Jeff Cotner told reporters alongside the victim's father-in-law Friday. Al-Jumaili was shot in front of his wife and brother, three weeks after fleeing Iraq to be in a safer place and reunite with his wife, who had moved to America a year earlier.

(CNN)—An Iraqi man watching his first snowfall in his new American hometown was shot and killed by an unknown assailant, according to Dallas police. Authorities have stepped up patrols in the neighborhood where Ahmed Al-Jumaili lived -- and died -- in their effort to find whoever killed the 36-year-old early Thursday as he and his brother watched the snow while Al-Jumaili's wife took photos.

The Iraqi military launched a major campaign to take back a key city from the self-proclaimed Islamic State over the weekend—a move that caught the U.S. “by surprise,” in the words of one American government official. The U.S.-led coalition forces that have conducted seven months of airstrikes on Iraq’s behalf did not participate in the attack, defense officials told The Daily Beast, and the American military has no plans to chip in. Instead, embedded Iranian advisors and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are taking part in the offensive on the largely Sunni town, raising the prospect that the fight to beat back...

Forty years after the Swedish parliament unanimously decided to change the formerly homogenous Sweden into a multicultural country, violent crime has increased by 300% and rapes by 700%. Sweden is now number two on the list of rape countries, surpassed only by Lesotho in Southern Africa. Significantly, the report does not touch on the background of the rapists. One should, however, keep in mind that in statistics, second-generation immigrants are counted as Swedes. In an astounding number of cases, the Swedish courts have demonstrated sympathy for the rapists, and have acquitted suspects who have claimed that the girl wanted to...

AMMAN - Jordan has executed by hanging a jailed Iraqi woman militant whose release had been demanded by the Islamic State group that burnt a captured Jordanian pilot to death, a security source said on Wednesday. Responding to the killing of the pilot, whose death was announced on Tuesday, the Jordanian authorities also executed another senior al-Qaida prisoner sentenced to death for plots to wage attacks against the pro-Western kingdom in the last decade. Sajida al-Rishawi, the Iraqi woman militant, was sentenced to death for her role in a 2005 suicide bomb attack that killed 60 people. Ziyad Karboli, an...

AMMAN/TOKYO - An audio message purportedly from a Japanese journalist being held by Islamic State militants said a Jordanian air force pilot also captured by the group would be killed unless an Iraqi female prisoner in Jordan was released by sunset on Thursday. The message appeared to postpone a previous deadline set on Tuesday in which the journalist, Kenji Goto, said he would be killed within 24 hours if the Iraqi was not freed. The latest audio recording, which could not be verified by Reuters, was posted on YouTube early on Thursday. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a...

December 29, 2008 Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/December/08-nsd-1151.html Former Maryland Man Charged with Conspiracy to Act as an Iraqi Agent Defendant Allegedly Worked for the Government of Iraq and Assisted the Iraqi Intelligence Service WASHINGTON – A criminal complaint was filed today charging Mouyad Mahmoud Darwish, age 47, formerly of Maryland, with conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government, specifically, as an agent of Iraq, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Patrick Rowan, Assistant Attorney General for National Security. Darwish is a Canadian citizen born in Iraq....

One of the Islamic State’s senior commanders reveals exclusive details of the terror group’s origins inside an Iraqi prison – right under the noses of their American jailers. In the summer of 2004, a young jihadist in shackles and chains was walked by his captors slowly into the Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq [snip] “I knew some of them straight away,” he told me last month. “I had feared Bucca all the way down on the plane. But when I got there, it was much better than I thought. In every way.”

These fictional soldiers may be the ones Obama was counting on to fight the Islamic State — after all, his “vetted moderates” among the “Syrian rebels” are no more real than these guys. “Iraq PM Haidar al-Abadi promises corruption crackdown after probe finds 50,000 ghost soldiers,” AFP, November 30, 2014 (thanks to Bill): Iraq’s prime minister Haidar al-Abadi has promised to crackdown on corruption after an investigation uncovered the existence of 50,000 “ghost soldiers”. “The prime minister revealed the existence of 50,000 fictitious names” in the military, Mr Abadi’s office said in a statement. The 50,000 jobs were equivalent to...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 eavesdropping program did not compromise its prosecution of an American Muslim cleric convicted of soliciting treason and convincing some of his followers to join the Taliban, prosecutors said. But defense lawyers are not satisfied with the government's claim, and on Friday a federal judge held a closed-door hearing and allowed attorneys for Ali al-Timimi some latitude to investigate the government's conduct. Al-Timimi, of Fairfax, a U.S.-born Muslim who studied under prominent fundamentalist clerics in Saudi Arabia, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison last year for soliciting treason and urging some...

It is unclear whether the cause of the syndrome is viral or bacterial – a distinction with implications for treatment – although autopsies have indicated that those who died were suffering from other complications, such as Chikungunya.Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever (VHF) is endemic in the two states of Portuguesa and Barinas, but transmission from person-to-person is uncommon.While samples have been sent to the Venezuelan National Institute of Health, the results have not yet been released publically and there is no suggestion from health officials that VHF is behind this particular outbreak.One doctor, who wishes to remain anonymous, attended a meeting last...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian prosecutors said on Thursday they had detained a man of Iraqi nationality after a series of letters containing a nerve gas ingredient were sent to the prime minister's office and the U.S. and British embassies. A spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office told a news conference the 45-year-old man was arrested late on Wednesday in the western Belgian town of Deinze. Two postal workers were taken to hospital after being exposed to the chemicals in the letters at mail depots. No one else was hurt by the 10 letters sent to a variety of targets, including...

June 4 — By Gilles Castonguay BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian investigators found a nerve gas ingredient in letters addressed to the Belgian prime minister's office, and the U.S., British and Saudi Arabian embassies, officials said on Wednesday. Two postal workers were briefly hospitalized after being exposed to the chemicals. The brownish-yellow powder contained phenarsazine chloride, an arsenic derivative used in nerve gas, as well as hydrazine, an agent used as a rocket propellant, said Health Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Francoise Gally said. In the amounts contained in the letters, the two chemicals are not life threatening, but can cause irritation to the...

It’s good to know that the Iraqi forces are doing their own humanitarian effort onto Mount Sinjar where the Yazidis are stranded, instead of just depending on America. In this video from Rudaw, a Kurdish news organization, a reporter goes along with the helicopter that drops off food and water from Iraqi charity services, and shows the danger they have to ward off from ISIS trying to shoot them out of the air. Watch the video from the Washington Post below:

British military chiefs are drawing up plans to help American airstrikes in Iraq, the Times reports. Senior figures are considering sending a spy plane to provide intelligence on ISIS positions, while Royal Air Force aircraft capable of refuelling U.S. fighter jets in mid-air will also be sent. The UK government, which has welcomed American intervention in the fight against ISIS, has also not ruled out conducting its own airstrikes if the humanitarian situation worsens. MPs are also discussing the possibility of using British special forces, who have long experience in the Kurdish region, to offer help in pinpointing targets. Former...

President Obama has approved a mission to to drop humanitarian aid in Iraq for the 40,000 or so religious minorities stranded on a mountaintop in the country's north after Islamic militants forced them to flee, senior U.S. officials told Fox News Thursday night. However, the officials said the air drops had not yet begun. If all goes well, they said, the mission will be completed following a single pass of U.S. military cargo jets. The officials did not disclose the planes' starting point due to host nation sensitivities. It was possible the mission also could include air strikes to protect...