Free Republic

It was the kind of calling that Petr Jasek simply could not turn away from. For more than 28 years, the Czech Republic native and global ambassador for international nonprofit The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) had traveled the world in support of persecuted Christians. And then...While preparing to board a flight home from the country’s capital Khartoum, the Christian leader was detained on charges of espionage and purporting to “wage war against the country of Sudan.” He was informed he was facing the death penalty and thrown into a filthy cell.Although it was seemingly designed for just one person,...

A three-judge federal appeals court said Tuesday the DOJ’s settlement with Fokker Services B.V. for alleged sanctions violations could go ahead after a district court judge rejected the arrangement as “anemic.” The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC said prosecutors and not judges make decisions to enter into deferred prosecution agreement with corporate defendants. In February 2015, federal district court judge Richard Leon refused to approve the settlement. He said the proposed $21 million penalty was “grossly disproportionate to the gravity of Fokker Sercvices’ conduct in a post-911 world.” Holland-based Fokker Services admitted in a 2014 plea deal that...

Sudan has criminalised carrying out female genital mutilation (FGM), making it punishable by three years in jail. Some 87% of Sudanese women aged between 14 and 49 have undergone some form of FGM, according to the UN. SNIP BBC Sudan analyst Mohaned Hashim notes that there have been previous attempts to ban FGM across the whole country but parliament under long-time leader Omar al-Bashir rejected the recommendations.

Israel has no role in the Palestinians' medical supply shortage. The real story is a shortage of leadership -- and rampant corruption We are in the midst of a global health crisis unlike any we have faced in our lifetime. A pandemic has filled the future with uncertainty and the world community is scared, but even dark times have a silver lining. All over the world, people are uplifting and supporting each other from a distance. Now is a time to come together. Sadly, Israel’s enemies are a clear exception to this. They never miss an opportunity to criticize the...

Where have we heard that number before? Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the jihad terror group Hamas, on Thursday boasted that if Israel didn’t come across with more ventilators for “Palestinian” coronavirus victims in Gaza, the jihadis “take them by force.” As if that weren’t enough, Sinwar added: “If ventilators are not brought into [Gaza], we’ll take them by force from Israel and stop the breathing of 6 million Israelis.” Of course, Sinwar wasn’t articulating any new imperative for the jihad group: a new genocide of the Jews has always been a cherished Hamas aspiration. As The Palestinian Delusion explains,...

The Muslim persecution of Christians that occurred in just one month. Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.   Reprinted from the Gatestone Institute. The following are some of the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians, categorized by theme, throughout the month of January, 2020: The Slaughter of Christians in Nigeria During several separate incidents, militant Muslims—whether Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram, or generic terrorists—continued to attack and massacre several Christians. As one example, on Friday, January 17, Muslim Fulani tribesmen on motorbikes raided a Christian village at a time they knew people were congregating at the village square...

The millions donated to Ethiopia in 1985 thanks to Live Aid were supposed to go towards relieving a natural disaster. In reality, donors became participants in a civil war. Many lives were saved, but even more may have been lost in Live Aid's unwitting support of a Stalinist-style resettlement project Isn't it better to do something rather than give in to despair or cynicism and do nothing? This is the reproachful question familiar to anyone who has criticised organisations that view themselves as dedicated to doing good in the world. To those UN agencies, relief organisations and development groups working...

CAIRO, March 29 (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said early on Sunday that the kingdom's air defences intercepted two ballistic missiles on Saturday night launched by Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group towards Riyadh and the city of Jizan, Saudi state news agency (SPA) said citing the coalition's spokesman. The coalition's spokesman, Colonel Turki al-Malki, said in a statement that no fatalities had been recorded so far. He said destroying the missiles caused some shrapnel to fall on residential neighbourhoods in the two cities, SPA reported. The spokesman added that firing missiles at this time by the Houthis and...

February 26, 2020A Feb. 22 ceremony in South Sudan's capital, Juba, brought two enemies face to face. That's one reason the ceremony may prove to be a major political step toward ending the country's terrible six-year-long internal war. Terrible doesn't adequately describe South Sudan's war. The conflict, which still flickers, has killed an estimated 400,000 people, though no one knows precisely. Accurate body counts involving forensic analysis of mass graves require peace. However, 400,000 dead and over 3 million displaced are conscience-shocking numbers. They are big enough to demand attention.

A Feb. 22 ceremony in South Sudan's capital, Juba, brought two enemies face to face. That's one reason the ceremony may prove to be a major political step toward ending the country's terrible six-year-long internal war. Terrible doesn't adequately describe South Sudan's war. The conflict, which still flickers, has killed an estimated 400,000 people, though no one knows precisely. Accurate body counts involving forensic analysis of mass graves require peace. However, 400,000 dead and over 3 million displaced are conscience-shocking numbers. They are big enough to demand attention. The Juba ceremony made senior rebel leader Riek Machar South Sudan's first...

USS Normandy (CG 60), in accordance with international law, boarded a stateless dhow in the Arabian Sea and interdicted an illicit shipment of advanced weapons and weapon components intended for the Houthis in Yemen, Feb. 9, 2020. US Navy Photo. Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG-60) seized a cache of Iranian-made anti-tank missiles and other munitions aboard a dhow in the Arabian Sea over the weekend. Normandy stopped the dhow while conducting maritime security operations over the weekend, in accordance with international law, according to a statement released Thursday by U.S. Central Command.

U.S. officials have confirmed to Fox News Thursday that a U.S. Navy warship intercepted Iranian-made weapons from a vessel in the Arabian Sea earlier this week. Crew members from the USS Normandy seized a huge cache of weapons from a dhow – a small vessel with lateen sails – on Sunday while conducting maritime security operations in the U.S. Central area of operations. The weapons and weapon components were intended for the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to officials.

The current feud between Egypt/Turkey has caused many to draw comparisons between how the two states conduct their policies in the ever-turbulent region of the MEIn its response to Turkey’s provocative practices, Egypt has maintained a policy of resilience and followed the guidelines of international law while at the same time showing a firm stance towards the acts of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan has deliberately and repeatedly insulted Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi at forums and in speeches using ad hominem tactics. From the way Erdogan has described him, it might have been thought that Al-Sisi was standing for election...

SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT: Some Arab countries are trying to get the Jews they forced out to return FEBRUARY 7, 2020 BY BARENAKEDISLAM More than 850,000 Jews lived in Arab countries in the 20th century. With the creation of Israel in 1948, all but a few thousand Jews were forced to leave the Arab countries where they had lived for generations and centuries. But today, there is a palpable longing in most Arab states for the Jews to return. Many believe that only with a Jewish presence will their countries blossom and develop as they did in the past. World Israel News...

Four US Senators, including Ted Cruz, penned a letter on February 6 to Jack Dorsey asking him to ban Iranian leadership from using Twitter as part of the US sanctions against Iran. Republican senators led by Ted Cruz in a letter Thursday suggested Twitter may be violating U.S. sanctions by letting Iranian leaders maintain accounts, which they asked company CEO Jack Dorsey to ban. The big picture: Twitter has become a major political target for Cruz and other Republicans, who claim the company and other Silicon Valley giants are biased against conservatives and the Trump administration. "While the First Amendment...

When Syria’s civil war erupted, Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) recruited, trained, and deployed thousands of Shi’ite fighters to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Among them was the Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised mainly of Afghans from the country's Shi'ite Hazara minority. From 2011, the IRGC recruited thousands of Afghan migrants and refugees within its own borders and covertly drafted hundreds of Shi'a inside Afghanistan. The majority of Muslims in Afghanistan are Sunni, but around 15 percent of its population -- mainly Hazara -- are Shi’a with religious links to the Shi'ite majority in Iran. With the...

President Trump has just laid out a visionary plan for achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Rather than trying to reconcile the fundamentally conflicting priorities of the two sides, he came up with a practical solution that reflects realities on the ground in the fairest way possible. Every American president since Lyndon Johnson has tried — and failed — to resolve the conflict, usually by sitting down with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to negotiate toothless agreements that have done nothing to ease tensions or prevent bloodshed. These well-intentioned efforts all made the same fatal mistake: they treated the Israeli...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that he has decided to severe all relations with Israel and the US in protest against President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled plan for Mideast peace. “We have informed the Israelis and Americans of this decision through two letters,” Abbas said in a speech at an emergency meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo.

Go back over 40 years, to the start of Iran’s long conflict with the United States. On April 1, 1979, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had returned to Iran from exile to assume command of the revolt, became Supreme Leader in December of that year. His rise was accelerated by the seizure on Nov. 4 of 52 American diplomats and citizens, and citizens of other countries, at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The hostage crisis became the means by which the Ayatollah crushed political opponents in Iran. Dealing with the hostage taking became...