Free Republic

Anxious FBI chiefs are trawling through 'numerous' top-level investigations spanning 22 years for fear they were compromised by convicted bureau spook Charles McGonigal, DailyMail.com can reveal. The forensic clean-up operation ranges over the entire time the philandering former head of counterintelligence in New York worked for the agency. McGonigal, 55, has already been sentenced to four years and two months in prison for taking money and conspiring with a sanctioned Russian oligarch who is a crony of despot President Vladimir Putin. But the full possible repercussions of his treachery are outlined in a sentencing memorandum by the US government for...

(excerpt) "If someone does not accept the accusation, they torture him to accept it. Confessions under coercion and the beating of the accused have no place in sharia (Islamic law) and our country's Constitution," Molavi Abdolhamid Ismaeelzahi said in a Friday prayers sermon, according to his website. Ismaeelzahi is based in Zahedan, capital of the impoverished Sistan-Baluchistan province, home to Iran's Baluch minority. Authorities have reportedly pressured him by banning him from traveling abroad and restricting his travels and contacts within Iran.

The U.S. State Department on Tuesday walked back remarks questioning Pakistan’s ability to keep its nuclear weapons safe by leftist President Joe Biden, who went as far as to call the South Asian nation, a nominal ally of America’s, “one of the most dangerous nations in the world.” Biden made the offending comments at a Democrat Party event at a private home in California last week. Offering disorganized remarks commenting on nuclear weapons generally, Biden mentioned Pakistan amid boasting yet again that he has a close personal relationship with dictator Xi Jinping of China. “I’ve spent more time with Xi...

Islamabad apparently bought peace with the TLP. As in its frequent mobilisations over the last few years, the TLP has once again forced the Pakistani state onto the backfoot and enhanced its own political clout. A relatively new phenomenon, the TLP, was founded in 2015 by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a firebrand cleric who died in November 2020. It now has a strong following among Pakistan’s Barelvi sect. At the heart of TLP’s ideology is the protection of the Prophet’s honour and a vigorous defence of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. In Pakistan, anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or the Prophet...

Al Qaeda's Hidden Roots By Laurie Mylroie The American Spectator | September 25, 2006 Cyrus Nowrasteh, scriptwriter for ABC's docudrama The Path to 9/11, defends the film's controversial, invented scenes, noting that the first attack on the World Trade Center occurred one month after Bill Clinton took office, and eight years passed in which Clinton did little to thwart the growing menace. Nowrasteh makes a crucial point, but it is not necessary to resort to fiction. Our understanding of the terrorist attacks -- going back to the 1993 Trade Center bombing -- has become loaded with errors obscuring Clinton's fecklessness....

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's official news agency is reporting that at least five senior commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guard have been killed in a homicide bombing in southeastern Iran

..." The sources pointed out that students and professors resisted the closure. Iranian forces shot them, and detained a number of students."

Several northwestern cities in Iran have recently been rocked by demonstrations and riots by ethnic Azerbaijani citizens. They were protesting a cartoon published in an official government newspaper that depicted the Azerbaijani minority as a cockroach and instructed people to deny it food until it learns to speak Persian. Last Sunday, thousands of Iranian Azerbaijanis gathered outside Parliament in Tehran to chant in their native Turkic language and demand the rights to operate schools in their own language. As his police forces heavy-handedly dispersed the demonstrators, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, praised the loyalty of the Azerbaijani citizens...

DUBAI, Dec 31 (Reuters) - A little-known Sunni rebel organisation says it has abducted nine Iranian soldiers to pressure Tehran to free imprisoned members of the group, Al Arabiya television said on Sunday. A caller speaking for the Jundollah (God's Soldiers) said the soldiers were seized near Iran's border with Pakistan, and demanded the release of 16 group members, the satellite television channel said. Iranian officials were not immediately available to comment. In July, the group said it beheaded an Iranian security agent it had abducted the previous month. Iran's remote southeastern areas on the border with Pakistan have seen...

KARACHI, Pakistan — Pakistan has blamed Iran for fueling a growing insurgency in Baluchistan, the strategically sensitive province where militant tribesmen have launched a series of terrorist attacks in recent weeks. Senior government officials say Iran is encouraging "intruders" from within its own Baluch community to cross the 550-mile border with the Pakistani province and give support to the rebels. "All this violence is a part of a greater conspiracy," a senior Pakistani government official said. "These militants would not be challenging the government so openly without the backup of a foreign hand." Pakistan's support would be essential for any...