Free Republic

Kiriakou, 47, was a source for stories by The New York Times and other news organizations in 2008 and 2009 about some of the agency’s most sensitive operations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ......... that the information Kiriakou supplied to journalists ... enabling defense attorneys there to obtain photographs of CIA operatives suspected of being involved in harsh interrogations. Some of the pictures were subsequently discovered in the cells of high-value detainees.

ISIS set four captured Iraqi men on fire by hog-tying them upside down, hanging them from a pole, then burning them alive. Once again, the savage execution was captured on video and shared on social media accounts friendly with the terror group as part of its propaganda and fear campaign. The four men in orange jumpsuits introduce themselves on camera and are made to watch videos of other ISIS executions before they’re marched out to the desert, with chains around their wrists and ankles, to their fate. After a man wearing camouflage and a mask explains how the men must...

A Canadian documentary has alleged that the Chinese state is aware and approves of the removal of organs from live political prisoners, often without anesthetic. Some 10,000 political prisoners are reportedly killed each year, and at least one former worker is willing to testify to atrocities. The documentary, produced by Australia’s SBS Dateline, purports to show the gruesome details of the multi-billion dollar “organs-on-demand” transplant program, and how these Chinese hospitals remove organs from live patients, in some cases putting the people in incinerators before they had even died. The filmmaker, Leon Lee, in an interview with Australia’s News.com, described...

ABID HUSSAN took one step inside the foul-smelling prison cell and began to shake. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead and behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. The 45-year-old shopkeeper pointed to the electric cables hanging from the ceiling where President Saddam Hussein’s security police would torture him three times a day. People tried to elbow their way inside this impossibly small 6ft by 4ft torture chamber. They were anxious to sift through the documents carpeting the floor to see if it gave a clue as to what became of a loved one, or friend, who had been dragged inside here...

(IraqiNews.com) Today Human Rights Watch reported that gunmen from the so-called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria carried out the systematic execution of about 600 male inmates from a prison on the outskirts of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq on June 10 according to accounts of the survivors. The overwhelming majority of the dead were Shiites. After seizing Badush prison near Mosul, the militants ISIS separated the Sunnis inmates from the Shiites, and then forced the latter to kneel at the edge of a valley and shot them from assault rifles and automatic weapons, according to what...

A Saudi Arabian blogger has been publicly flogged after being convicted of cybercrime and insulting Islam, reports say. Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail, was flogged 50 times. The flogging will be carried out weekly, campaigners say. Mr Badawi, the co-founder of a now banned website called the Liberal Saudi Network, was arrested in 2012. Rights groups condemned his conviction and the US appealed for clemency. On Thursday state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki urged the Saudi authorities to "cancel this brutal punishment" and to review his case. In addition to his sentence, Mr...

Obama’s Amazing AchievementsHis military intervention prompted some stunning reversals. By bombing Libya, President Obama has accomplished some things once thought absolutely impossible in America:(a) War-mongering liberals: Liberals are now chest-thumping about military “progress” in Libya. Even liberal television and radio commentators cite ingenious reasons why an optional, preemptive American intervention in an oil-producing Arab country, without prior congressional approval or majority public support — and at a time of soaring deficits — is well worth supporting, in a sort of “my president, right or wrong,” fashion. Apparently, liberal foreign policy is returning to the pre-Vietnam days of the hawkish “best...

The Mirror board said Morgan would be stepping down immediately Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan has been sacked after the newspaper conceded photos of British soldiers abusing an Iraqi were fake.

Gadhafi Loyalists Still Battling New Western-backed Rulers in Libya Written by Alex Newman A year after the execution of former Libyan despot Moammar Gadhafi at the hands of Western-backed rebels, forces opposed to the new Tripoli-based regime ruling parts of Libya are still fighting on. According to news reports, assorted Libyan militias supposedly aligned with the embattled new government have been shelling the Gadhafi-loyalist stronghold of Bani Walid all weekend in a bid to quash the late dictator’s remaining die-hard supporters. Officials with the new government said the fighting reflected the fact that not all of Libya had been “liberated”...

Hitler's Muslim Nephew Comes to New York September 24, 2007 FrontPageMagazine.com Kenneth R. Timmerman What was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinking? Apparently the former Democrat believed that escorting Iran’s Hitler-wannabe president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to the site of the September 11 memorial at Ground Zero would generate a terrific photo op. “Here I am with world leaders,” that type of thing. After all, Bloomberg has already made his appearance at the “World Leaders Forum” at Columbia University, so he was in the zone. And last year, U.S. News & World Report crowned him as one of America’s “best leaders.” But...

BAMAKO - Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants have joined forces in northern Mali and say they will create an independent Islamist state. The groups took advantage of a military coup in Bamako to seize control of the territory in early April. Resistance is growing in the north to the efforts to introduce Islamic law. In the northern Malian town of Gao, court is in session. Commissioner Abdoulaye Maiga begins by reading from the Quran in the roadside courtyard outside the former police station. Once an area businessman, Maiga is a member of the militant Islamist sect Ansar Dine that residents...

“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather.) “Fidel Castro is one hell of a guy! “You people would like him!” (Ted Turner to a capacity crowd at Harvard Law School during a speech in 1997.) “Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly—even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” (Andrea Mitchell.) “Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful, his presence is commanding.” (Barbara Walters.) “Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” (Jesse Jackson while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself in 1984.) "Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, I frankly like him and...

While Britons celebrated the royal wedding last Friday, one of Iran’s greatest intellectuals willingly fell to his death from the sixth-floor balcony of his Tehran apartment. Siamak Pourzand, aged 80, had held out long enough against the Islamic Republic..... Pourzand was an already prominent cultural commentator and foreign correspondent long before Ayatollah Khomeini boarded a plane from Paris, full of big ideas, in 1979.... Secular and cosmopolitan to the core, Pourzand had no time for the guardianship of the sadists and made a point of saying so, especially in the late 1990s when he began writing for various opposition newspapers...

The phone rang and it was Ross Perot, who hasn't given an interview in years. Perot, who won 19 percent of the vote in the 1992 presidential election, making him one of the strongest third-party candidates in American history, got straight to the point. "Remember what you wrote about John McCain in the March 13, 2000, NEWSWEEK?" "Sure," I lied. "When McCain called Perot 'nuttier than a fruitcake'?" The Texas billionaire, now 77, still has some scores to settle from the Vietnam era, and his timing is exquisite. Just days before the South Carolina GOP primary, he wants me to...

SENEGAL — A West African regional court found the government of Niger guilty on Monday of failing to protect a young woman who was sold into slavery at the age of 12. The landmark ruling, which was delivered by a regional tribunal sitting in Niamey, Niger's capital, ordered the government to pay about $19,000 in damages to the woman, Hadijatou Mani, who is now 24. Slavery is outlawed in Niger and the rest of Africa, but it persists in pockets of Niger, Mali and Mauritania. Anti-slavery organizations estimate that 43,000 people are enslaved in Niger alone, where nomadic tribes have...

America's Justice Department said it would reopen an investigation into the role of CIA employees in torturing terrorist suspects, including an incident in which a detainee was subjected to a mock execution. The Justice Department's ethics office recommend an inquiry in a report presented to Attorney General Eric Holder that will be released on Monday. Details of prisoner abuses that were gathered in 2004 by the agency's inspector general have never been released but when the CIA first referred to the inspector general's findings, it decided that none of the cases merited prosecution. "With the release of the details on...

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain on Thursday welcomed President Obama’s decision to oppose the release of photographs documenting prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan by United States military personnel, even as criticism continued from groups of the left. “We are still in a war,” said Senator McCain, the Arizona Republican who is a member of the Armed Services Committee. “The publication of those photographs would have given help to the enemy in the psychological side of the war we are in. I applaud the president’s decision." The former Republican presidential candidate made his remarks during a hearing of the armed...

President Bush could pardon officials involved in brutal interrogations -- but he may also face a sweeping investigation under the new president. WASHINGTON -- With growing talk in Washington that President Bush may be considering an unprecedented "blanket pardon" for people involved in his administration's brutal interrogation policies, advisors to Barack Obama are pressing ahead with plans for a nonpartisan commission to investigate alleged abuses under Bush. The Obama plan, first revealed by Salon in August, would emphasize fact-finding investigation over prosecution. It is gaining currency in Washington as Obama advisors begin to coordinate with Democrats in Congress on the...

(CBS) A German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that Americans tortured him in many ways - including hanging him from the ceiling for five days early in his captivity when he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Even after determining he was not a terrorist, Murat Kurnaz says the torture continued. Kurnaz tells his story for the first time on American television this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Kurnaz, an ethnic Turk born and raised in Germany, went to Pakistan in late 2001 at age 19 to study Islam and...

<p>BAGHDAD _U.S. authorities in Baghdad have received five severed fingers belonging to four Americans and an Austrian who were taken hostage more than a year ago in Iraq , U.S. officials said Wednesday.</p> <p>The FBI is investigating the grisly development, and the families of the five kidnapped contractors have been notified, American officials said on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the case publicly.</p>