Free Republic

Turkey announced the street leading to the new U.S. embassy being built will now be renamed to “Malcolm X Road” after the slain black Muslim civil right leader. According to Bloomberg News, news of the street rename came by way of a tweet made by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s hardline halt to arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may jeopardize a big UK-led Eurofighter order from Riyadh and could hit jobs at a shipyard in struggling northeastern Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been more outspoken than fellow major arms exporters the United States, Britain and France about stopping sales to Saudi Arabia until Khashoggi’s case is cleared up, a stance that a senior conservative ally said could also affect previously approved orders. Berlin is now reviewing all Saudi sales, including contracts approved in September for more patrol...

Was the assassination of JFK by Lee Harvey Oswald still getting as much media coverage three weeks after his death as it did that first week after Nov. 22, 1963? Not as I recall. Yet, three weeks after his murder, Jamal Khashoggi, who was not a U.S. citizen, was not killed by an American, and died not on U.S. soil but in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, consumes our elite press. The top two stories in Monday's Washington Post were about the Khashoggi affair. A third, inside, carried the headline, "Trump, who prizes strength, may look weak in hesitance to...

The disappearance of Saudi journalist and former kingdom insider Jamal Khashoggi sent shockwaves across the Middle East and Washington. On October 10, President Donald Trump said that the US was “demanding” answers after the writer went missing while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Tuesday. American Senators and congressmen have urged the White House to support an investigation into the missing man’s whereabouts and Vice President Mike Pence has offered FBI support. U.S.–Saudi relations, which have warmed under Trump after being on the rocks during the...

ISTANBUL — His killers were waiting when Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. They severed his fingers and later beheaded and dismembered him, according to details from audio recordings described by a senior Turkish official on Wednesday. Mr. Khashoggi was dead within minutes, and within two hours the killers were gone, the recordings suggested. The leaking of such details, on the same day Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was visiting Turkey, reflected an escalation of pressure by the Turkish government on Saudi Arabia and the United States for answers on the fate of Mr....

Over the weekend Donald Trump warned of "severe punishment" if an investigation concludes that a Saudi hit team murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Riyadh then counter-threatened, reminding us that, as the world's largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia "plays an impactful and active role in the global economy." Message: Sanction us, and we may just sanction you. Some of us yet recall how President Nixon's rescue of Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War triggered a Saudi oil embargo that led to months of long gas lines in the United States, and contributed to...

CNN reported on Monday that Saudi Arabia is preparing a report in which they will admit that Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who went missing earlier this month, was killed in an “interrogation gone wrong.”

One of the most influential Arab journalists in the world, Jamal Khashoggi, went missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week. Turkish authorities have blamed the Saudis, but Riyadh has denied harming the veteran reporter.Jamal Khashoggi, 59, was born in Medina, Saudi Arabia, one of the holiest cities in Islam. Like many Saudis at the time, Khashoggi left to study abroad. He earned a business administration degree in 1983 at Indiana State University in the United States.Career in journalismKhashoggi began his career as a reporter for the English language newspaper Saudi Gazette. He went on to work for...

Facing pressure from Congress to act, President Donald Trump vowed “severe punishment” on Saudi Arabia if it turns out that missing WaPo reporter Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, as Trump turned up the pressure on the kingdom in an interview to be broadcast Sunday night. “Nobody knows” whether Saudi officials are involved although they “deny it vehemently,” Trump said in an excerpt of a CBS News “60 Minutes” interview.”It’s being looked at very, very strongly. We would be very upset and angry if that was the case.” “We’re going to get to the bottom of...

He had an appointment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to collect some documents he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee -- a certificate showing that he was divorced from his first wife. He entered the consulate on Oct. 2 at 1:14 p.m., asking his fiancee to wait outside for him. She did. Until 2 a.m. He never emerged. A number of news outlets, citing Turkish sources, are reporting that Jamal Khashoggi, the former editor of a Saudi newspaper, regime critic and Washington Post contributor, was murdered. The New York Times quoted sources who said that 15 Saudi agents from...

Turkish authorities suspect that missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared on Tuesday after entering Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, was killed inside the consulate, Turkish sources told Middle East Eye and news agencies on Saturday. A senior Turkish police source told MEE that police believed that Khashoggi, a prominent critic of the Saudi government, was "brutally tortured, killed and cut into pieces" inside the consulate after visiting the building on 2 October. "Everything was videotaped to prove the mission had been accomplished and the tape was taken out of the country," the source said.

American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was swept up in a wave of arrests in the wake a failed coup attempt in Turkey, was released on Friday, easing a major controversy between the United States and the NATO ally. A judge ordered Brunson's release as part of a reported deal in which President Trump will “ease economic pressure” on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s country. Turkey is not dropping the case against Brunson. The prosecutor “demanded up to 10 years in prison for terror charges,” a pro-government outlet reported, but Brunson will be allowed to leave the country. “The Second High Criminal...

Finally, after an excruciatingly long wait of almost two years, it appears the incarceration of United States pastor Andrew Brunson will finally come to an end. According to NBC News, the White House has brokered a deal to secure Brunson’s freedom: The White House expects North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson to be released by the Turkish government and returned to the U.S. in the coming days, two years after he was detained, according to two senior administration officials and another person briefed on the matter. Under an agreement senior Trump administration officials recently reached with Turkey, Brunson is supposed to...

The Ministry of Tourism for the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago hosts a website extolling the many exquisite charms of the “true Caribbean” to be found there. The islands offer rich history, culture, biodiversity, and lodging with views “to die for.”Of late, though, a diaspora of Trinidad and Tobago emigres have preferred the views in Syria and Iraq, and the company of Islamic terrorist group ISIS. At least 130 of T&T’s 1.2 million citizens left their white and turquoise shorelines to fight with vicious Islamists half a world away. How did that happen? “Entire families went,” including at least...

The Sudanese government has cleared a shipment of Bibles believed to have been held in Port Sudan for six years. The Arabic-language Bibles were released two weeks ago and transported to the capital, Khartoum, after years of appeals by church leaders, a local source told World Watch Monitor. “Since 2011, government customs officials have delayed the clearing of several shipments of Arabic Bibles via Port Sudan, without explanation,” the source said, adding that it had left Bibles decaying in shipping containers at the port while the approximate 2 million Christians in the country were facing a serious shortage of Bibles...

The Supreme Court will hear a Catholic Christian woman's final appeal against her sentencing of execution after she was found guilty of "insulting" the prophet Muhammad.

KUALA LUMPUR: No more knocks on the door in the middle of the night and no more breaking down of doors by the religious authorities investigating reports of khalwat or other alleged wrongdoings. Instead, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Dr Mujahid Yusof Rawa insists that what Muslims do behind closed doors is none of the government’s business. “Let’s say you commit something within your personal, individual sphere – I will not interfere. “For example, consumption of alcohol is wrong for a Muslim, but if you consume it within your sphere, then as part of the government, I will...

The former Miss Baghdad, and first runner-up for Miss Iraq, was killed on Thursday after gunmen opened fire on her in the capital’s Camp Sarah neighborhood, according to a statement by Iraq’s Interior Ministry, which is investigating the incident. Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Saad Maan told an Iraqi TV station that two motorcyclists shot Fares while she was inside a vehicle. The 22-year-old, a Christian whose father was Iraqi and mother Lebanese, was living in Erbil, but visited the capital occasionally. She was famous for her bold clothing and posts on social media.

History is recorded daily, whether we like it or not. History isn't what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. Iran is deteriorating faster than we thought, almost to the point of no return. The Iranian people are aware that after 40 years of complete devastation by the rulers of the Islamic regime, they no longer want the Islamic Republic. In an interview with the Associated Press, Reza Pahlavi remarked, "We all know that regime change is the ultimate formula." Mr. Pahlavi is a harsh critic of the clerical rulers who have dominated Iran...

In a blistering takedown of U.S. policy toward Syria, Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Thursday said “it’s time to act” in the war-torn nation as dictator Bashar Assad’s forces prepare to launch an assault on Idlib that many fear could one of the bloodiest campaigns in the ongoing war. Mr. Kinzinger, Illinois Republican and an outspoken voice on national security issues, argued in an op-ed for Defense One that the U.S. approach in Syria — both during the Obama administration and now under President Trump — has been an abject failure. While he stressed that an all-out ground invasion isn’t the...