Free Republic

President Donald Trump is due to meet Chinese president Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Osaka of 19 countries and the E.U. on June 28–29, 2019, focusing on international co-operation for economic growth. No doubt, the main conversation will be on economic issues. But a new issue must not be neglected: the remarkable large demonstrations in Hong Kong, an area of 426 square miles with a highly literate population of 7.4 million, in June 2019 against attempts at erosion of the rights of citizens and for protection against mainland China. The issue is significant for two reasons: it indicates...

China doubled down on its miscalculation in Hong Kong overnight after more than a million people spilled onto the streets to protest an extradition law demanded by Beijing. Roughly a seventh of the enclave’s population put the city in gridlock and prevented its semi-autonomous legislature from considering the bill. Police were ordered to break it up with teargas and water hoses, which already appears to be backfiring: Protests in Hong Kong have now turned violent. This comes after more than a million people marched Sunday, according to organizers, in protest against a hugely controversial extradition bill with China.@IvanCNN is...

The Department of Justice has made its formal request to the U.K. to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The U.S. made this official extradition request to the U.K. last Thursday, June 6, according to “a U.S. official who spoke on background to discuss a sensitive matter” as reported by the Washington Post. The extradition treaty between the U.K. and the U.S., signed in 2003 and made effective in 2007, required that “the formal request for extradition and the documents supporting the extradition request” had to be received within 60 days of Assange’s arrest back on April 11. Senior Columnist Fred...

"""Julian Assange misses his US extradition hearing because he's 'too ill to speak' - hours after he was moved to Belmarsh prison hospital wing amid 'grave concerns' for his health""" Julian Assange failed to appear at court today because he is 'not very well' WikiLeaks yesterday said its founder's health has deteriorated They claim he was incapable of holding a basic conversation with his lawyer Assange is serving 50 weeks in HMP Belmarsh for skipping bail in 2012 The next hearing is on June 12 and is likely they will visit him at Belmarsh

Julian Assange’s belongings from his time living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London will be handed over to US prosecutors on Monday, according to WikiLeaks. Ecuadorian officials are travelling to London to allow US prosecutors to “help themselves” to items including legal papers, medical records and electronic equipment, it was claimed. WikiLeaks said UN officials and Assange’s lawyers were being stopped from being present. Lawyers said it was an illegal seizure of property, which has been requested by the US authorities. The material is said to include two of Assange’s manuscripts. Assange was dragged out of the embassy last month...

British police have further arrested WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange on behalf of United States authorities under an extradition request, according to the U.K’s Metropolitan Police. In an update, the Metropolitan Police posted that Assange has been “further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10:53hrs after his arrival at a central London police station. This is an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the Extradition Act. He will appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court as soon as possible.”

Two wealthy Ecuadorian brothers, Roberto and William Isaías, who were owners of companies fined and ordered to shut down for illegally trafficking world-wide in aborted baby parts purchased from Planned Parenthood, were arrested by ICE on February 13, 2019. [snip] Roberto and William Isaias, who fled Ecuador to avoid 8-year prison sentences, were principals in California companies DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics, and the two career criminals were allowed to stay in the United States by Hillary Clinton’s State Department under “suspicious circumstances” after they donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign fund.

A Swedish court in Gothenburg has refused a Polish request for the extradition of a Stalinist-era judge suspected of issuing unlawful death sentences to underground fighters in the 1950s. Judge Mats Hagelin justified the decision by declaring that the crimes that the former judge, Stefan Michnik, allegedly committed in Poland decades ago were covered by a statute of limitations under Swedish law. In October, a Polish court issued an European arrest warrant for Michnik, who is suspected of committing 30 crimes “bearing the hallmarks of crimes against humanity” in Warsaw in 1952 and 1953. The ninety-year-old, who has Swedish citizenship,...

(BEIJING) — China on Tuesday demanded the U.S. drop a request that Canada extradite a top executive of the tech giant Huawei, shifting blame to Washington in a case that has severely damaged Beijing’s relations with Ottawa. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Meng Wanzhou’s case was out of the ordinary and Canada’s extradition treaty with the U.S. infringed on the “safety and legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens.” Hua said China demands that the U.S. withdraw the arrest warrant against Meng and “not make a formal extradition request to the Canadian side.” Hua’s remarks come after More than...

A black SUV pulled up to Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah’s home in Southeast Portland two weeks before his June 2017 trial. Noorah, a Saudi national charged the year before in the fatal hit-and-run of a teenage girl crossing Hawthorne Boulevard, had a bag packed that Saturday afternoon. The private car drove the 21-year-old Portland Community College student to a sand-and-gravel yard two miles away. That’s where Noorah sliced off the tracking monitor he had worn around his ankle for months, according to interviews with federal authorities. He then discarded it at the scene before vanishing, leaving a victim’s family crushed and prosecutors furious and...

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

US prosecutors have charged Huawei's chief financial officer with fraud, saying she had used at least seven passports in 11 years. - ...she was charged with conspiracy to defraud multiple financial institutions between 2009 and 2014. It is alleged she used Hong Kong company Skycom to access the Iranian market in deals that violated US sanctions. She allegedly assured US banks that Huawei and Skycom were different companies but prosecutors say they were one and the same. - Mr Gibb-Carsley said she had been aware of the US investigation and had avoided entering the country since March 2017, despite the...

SAN DIEGO, CA – Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, who is charged with the first-degree murder of U.nited S.tates Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, was extradited from Mexico to the United States today, announced Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Southern District of California U.S. Attorney Adam Braverman for the Southern District of California. He will be arraigned in U.nited S.tates District Court in, Tucson, Arizona, Wednesday tomorrow afternoon. Osorio-Arellanes has been in custody awaiting extradition since his arrest by Mexican authorities on April 12, 2017. Agent Terry was fatally shot on Dec.ember 14, 2010, when he and other U.S. Border Patrol agents encountered...

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom suffered a major setback in his epic legal battle against online piracy charges Thursday when New Zealand's Court of Appeal ruled he was eligible for extradition to the United States. The German national, who is accused of netting millions from his file sharing Megaupload empire, faces charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering in the US, carrying jail terms of up to 20 years. Dotcom had asked the court to overturn two previous rulings that the Internet mogul and his three co-accused be sent to America to face charges. Instead, a panel of three judges backed...

An "extraordinary" effort by the new U.S. administration prevented former CIA officer Sabrina de Sousa from being the first ever extradited for an alleged CIA misdeed, according to her spokesman. De Sousa, who was set to be extradited from Portugal to Italy over the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric, won a last-minute reprieve on Wednesday. Sabrina de Sousa was one of 26 people convicted in absentia for the 2003 abduction of radical Egyptian cleric Osama Mustapha Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. He was then transported to his native Egypt for interrogation where he says he was tortured.

A Greek appeals court ruled on Tuesday against Ankara’s request to extradite three of eight Turkish soldiers who fled across the border to Greece after last year’s failed coup attempt.In January, Greece’s top court had blocked the extradition of all eight men, who Turkey alleges were involved in efforts to overthrow the government. Ankara then filed a second extradition request.The court is expected to rule in the coming weeks on the five cases remaining from the second requestThe three majors, three captains and two sergeant-majors landed a helicopter in Greece on July 16 and sought asylum, saying they feared for...

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was arrested last January after almost six months on the run following his escape from a maximum-security prison in MexicoThe convicted Sinaloa cartel boss had been held most recently at a prison near Ciudad Juarez. He was recaptured a year ago after escaping from a second maximum-security prison through a tunnel dug to his cell. The 2015 escape was highly embarrassing for the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, and Mexican officials were seen as eager to hand the headache off to the United States afterward. Guzman's lawyers have fought extradition since his recapture. Guzman, who...

The U.S. Justice Department issued a statement confirming that Guzman was en route to the United States and expressed gratitude to Mexico for its cooperation.

Poland's Supreme Court rejected a government request to return the extradition case of filmmaker Roman Polanski to a Krakow court. "Even if we agree with certain views contained in the appeal, we found that the ruling issued by the Krakow Court didn't violate the law," Judge Michal Laskowski said Tuesday. Polanski, a French-Polish director who is Jewish, fled the United States nearly four decades ago after being convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl. An October 2015 ruling in a Krakow court blocked his extradition. Attorney General Zbigniew Ziobro said the ruling violated Poland’s extradition agreements with the U.S. Ziobro said...

Malaysia has arrested a man on charges of hacking into the personal information of more than a thousand U.S. security officials and handing the database to the Islamic State militant group in Syria so it could target the individuals. The 20-year-old from Kosovo, who entered Malaysia in August 2014 to study computer science and forensics at a private institute in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, will be extradited to the United States, police said in a statement on Thursday night. "Early investigation found the suspect communicated with one of the right hand man (leader) of IS terrorist group in Syria to...