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Italian Woman, Kidnapped by Muslim Terrorists, Converts to Islam and Returns to Rome JUN 6, 2020 10:00 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD When Silvia Romano was freed from her 18-month captivity in the hands of al-Shebaab, after the payment of a large ransom by the Italian government to her captors, she arrived in Rome to be welcomed as a returning hero. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister were both at the airport to greet her. There was one loud dissenting voice, from a member of Parliament, Alessandro Pagano, who derided Romano as a “neo-terrorist.” This horrified many of the Great...

On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by two black men and a white woman, all three of whom are armed. Her fiance, Stephen Weed, was beaten and tied up along with a neighbor who tried to help. Witnesses reported seeing a struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and she was put in the trunk of a car. Neighbors who came out into the street were forced to take cover after the kidnappers fired their guns to cover their escape. Three days later, the Symbionese...

“American Heiress,” Jeffrey Toobin’s new book about Patty Hearst, is a clever companion piece to “The Run of His Life” (1996), his book about the O. J. Simpson case. Mr. Toobin has used the same winning formula of delving deeply into an American crime story that had tremendous notoriety in its day and retelling it with new resonance. Ms. Hearst’s tale is much more bizarre than Mr. Simpson’s. And much less of it has to do with legal proceedings, Mr. Toobin’s specialty. But in an age of terrorism, the chronicle of how a sedate heiress named Patricia morphed into a...

Brainiac hopped in the time machine this week, set the dial for this week in April 1974 and traveled back 40 years to see what was happening in our fair towns back in the days of high inflation, the oil crisis and ’70s sitcoms both classic and cheesy. Our time machine, of course, is the microfilm – it’s like Google before Google existed, kids! – of the Orange County Register, and what we found was a whole lot of ordinary. The big news of the day was pretty big indeed, we must acknowledge. “Patty Calls Dad, Boyfriend ‘Pigs,’” read the...

Exactly forty years ago Patricia Hearst stunned the nation when she turned up as a bank robber, a mere two months after she was kidnapped by the violent cult that called itself “The Symbionese Liberation Army.” Her astonishing transformation was documented by bank cameras on April 15, 1974.

It took less than 24 hours for the political Left to seize upon the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six people on Saturday to blame the political Right for the shooting. Perhaps the most egregious example came from Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who wrote "We don't have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was." (The newspaper that published plagiarized and fabricated accounts of the "D.C. sniper" by affirmative-action hire Jayson Blair in 2003 is still publishing unsubstantiated suppositions without "proof," eh?) "[Giffords'] father says that ‘the...

Yesterday Comrade Obama and the Bitter Half treated the nation to this uplifting Kwanzaa greeting: "Michelle and I extend our warmest thoughts and wishes to all those who are celebrating Kwanzaa this holiday season. Today is the first of a joyful seven-day celebration of African-American culture and heritage. The seven principles of Kwanzaa — Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity and Faith — are some of the very values that make us Americans." Actually, these are the values that would make you not American, but Symbionese. They are the same concepts symbolized by the seven deadly...

Another one of Bill Ayers’ and Bernardine Dohrn’s terrorist comrades is being released on the streets of America. Sara Jane Olson, a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an off-shoot of the Weather Underground, has served only seven years for involvement in the murder of a bank customer and the attempted murder of Los Angeles police officers by bombing their cars. Meanwhile, justice continues to be sought for the victims of Weather Underground terrorism such as San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell, who was killed by a bomb on February 16, 1970. Former FBI informant Larry Grathwohl has...

French magazine Femmes has given a nice cover and 40 pages to heiress-Supermodel Lydia Hearst including a 6-page-spread about her family and her. She looks damn pretty, doesn’t she?

The release of former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson from prison has angered Jon Opsahl, whose mother was gunned down in a Carmichael bank by the SLA. Myrna Opsahl was shot to death in the lobby of a Carmichael bank during an April 21, 1975, SLA bank robbery. After serving six years in prison for his mother's death and for trying to bomb police cars, Olson is now free. She was released Monday from the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. "She's out of prison too soon by far," Jon Opsahl said Friday. "It's another in a series...

Nearly nine years after she was arrested and six years after she went to prison, Sara Jane Olson will once again call St. Paul home. Olson, who pleaded guilty to a failed plot to kill Los Angeles police officers and to her role in a deadly bank robbery, was released from the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla on Monday and is expected to arrive in the Twin Cities by today. A young man who answered the phone at the family home in St. Paul early Friday evening said the family would have no comment. Olson is scheduled to report...

"I was kidnapped by terrorists. It's not like I'm numb to this and think it can't happen. But get real!" Hearst admonished. "There's so much weeping and wailing and memorializing, my feeling is it'd be a lot healthier if people didn't externalize so much and kind of bucked up a little bit." The 51-year-old media heiress was famously abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, then served 21 months in prison for bank robbery and was pardoned by Bill Clinton. "What good is our government if they can't keep our level of fear at a point where we can...

<p>When five graying, former Symbionese Liberation Army comrades pleaded guilty in recent months to carrying out a deadly Sacramento bank robbery more than a quarter century ago, Wendy Yoshimura was living quietly out of the spotlight in Oakland.</p> <p>The 60-year-old Yoshimura is an enigma, a painter of tranquil watercolors and a part-time employee of Berkeley's Juice Bar collective who has never publicly discussed her days among some of the nation's most-wanted fugitives.</p>

US terror suspect Kilgore rearrested The US terror suspect James Kilgore was re-arrested on a fraud charge today, soon after an order for his release was granted by a Wynberg magistrate. Michael Evans, his attorney, said the charge was related to his entry into South Africa, allegedly under a false name. The arrest took place while he was still in the court building waiting for the court's order to be processed. Evans said Kilgore's legal team was trying to arrange a court, and prosecutor, to hear a bail application "now". The Wynberg Magistrate's court ordered that Kilgore, a former...