Free Republic

Radio Free Europe journalist accuses Iran of intimidation March 5, 2008 PARIS: An Iranian-American radio journalist who is facing a yearlong prison term for her broadcasts to Iran through Radio Free Europe said Wednesday that Iran had threatened to seize her 95-year-old mother's home in Tehran if she did not return to serve a sentence for propaganda. The journalist, Parnaz Azima, 59, who works for the Persian-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, said her lawyer in Iran was appealing her conviction Saturday by Tehran's 13th Revolutionary Court for spreading propaganda and working for the "anti-revolutionary" Radio Farda,...

Paul Pillar Speaks, Again The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new. by Stephen F. Hayes 02/10/2006 4:15:00 PM IN A BREATHLESS front-page, above-the-fold article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that a former senior CIA official named Paul Pillar accuses the Bush administration of "misusing" intelligence to take the country to war in Iraq. According to the Post account, Pillar uses a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs to claim that the Bush administration "politicized" the intelligence on Iraq. Bush administration policymakers did this subtly, Pillar says, by repeatedly asking the CIA questions about Iraq, its...

"In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars."  U.S. government "Summary of Evidence" for an Iraqi member of al Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay, CubaFOR MANY, the debate over the former Iraqi regime's ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network ended a year ago with the release of the 9/11 Commission report. Media outlets seized on a carefully worded summary that the commission had found no evidence "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or...

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, March 29 - Shortly before Kyrgyzstan's recent parliamentary elections, an opposition newspaper ran photographs of a palatial home under construction for the country's deeply unpopular president, Askar Akayev, helping set off widespread outrage and a popular revolt in this poor Central Asian country. The newspaper was the recipient of United States government grants and was printed on an American government-financed printing press operated by Freedom House, an American organization that describes itself as "a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world." In addition to the United States, several European countries - Britain, the Netherlands and Norway...

WASHINGTON, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Mohammed Atta, a suspected pilot in Sept. 11 attacks, discussed plans to blow up the Radio Free Europe building in Prague when he met an Iraqi agent there earlier this year, the Czech Prime Minister said on Friday. "Atta contacted some Iraq agent, not to prepare the terrorist attack on twins (the World Trade Center twin towers), but to prepare a terrorist attack on just the building of Radio Free Europe," Czech leader Milos Zeman told CNN. "There were some plans to use the truck standard explosives to destroy the building," said Zeman, who is ...

BRITAIN'S opposition Conservative Party has bounced back to within two points of Prime Minister Tony Blair's ruling Labour Party during campaigning for an election expected in May, according to a poll today. The Mori poll for the Financial Times said the Conservatives had narrowed last October's 10-point gap to record the party's best poll performance since July 2003. The survey was conducted at the weekend following intense pre-election campaigning, which has focused on domestic issues such as immigration, public services and the economy. The poll, published on the FT's website (http://www.ft.com) put Labour on 39 per cent, the Conservatives on...

(Washington, DC--November 1, 2004) The escalation of violence by Islamic extremists over the past year has mobilized moderate Muslims to speak out against Islamic terrorists, an expert on suicide bombers told an RFE/RL audience last week. Joyce M. Davis, author of "Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance, and Despair in the Middle East," and an associate director of broadcasting at RFE/RL, said that the terrorists perpetrating violence in the name of Islam are at "war with Islam" itself, and that Muslims who believe in the peaceful tenants of their faith are the ones "who will have to defeat them." Davis said that she...

A generation ago, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, young people in America turned out by the thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, to protest the U.S. war in Vietnam. Today the Iraq war is just as hotly debated in the United States, but there are few street protests, and those few are not well attended. Last week, U.S. President George W. Bush traveled to the southern state of Louisiana to deliver the commencement address for Louisiana State University, and urged the new graduates to use their educations wisely. "Our country depends on business people who are honest in...

<p>July 9, 2003 -- The U.S. military has arrested the mysterious, high-ranking Iraqi spy who allegedly huddled with Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta in Prague just months before the terror attacks.</p> <p>Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, who reportedly met with Atta in April 2001 to go over plans to attack the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe building there, was apprehended July 2, a U.S. official said.</p>