Free Republic

Imagine your country being invaded by a frightening combination of stealthy military force and mafia/street thugs carrying advanced, high-tech weaponry... yet refusing to wear insignia, produce ID, or even tell the truth re. who they are, where they came from, or what they are doing there. And nobody does anything to stop them, either inside or outside the country. Then the few patriots that do dare to speak-out against the invader's lies and territorial aggression begin to simply disappear... Kiev Post:  Twelve persons, including journalists (and one American), have been kidnapped over the past week in the eastern Ukrainian cities...

Hamas issued a threat to Israel on Friday, warning that it will kidnap more Israeli soldiers in order to bring about the release of all Palestinian Authority Arab prisoners. The terror group which controls Gaza made the threats in a statement posted on its website on the second anniversary of the release of Gilad Shalit. … In the two years that have passed since Shalit’s release, many of the terrorists who were freed in the deal have been re-arrested when they were discovered to have resumed terrorist activities. …

Ohio prosecutors Thursday were close to reaching a plea deal with Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man accused of kidnapping three women and holding them captive for a decade. That deal, which he is expected to accept, is life without parole with an additional 1,000 years, NBC News has learned.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the agents of the Gulf cartel claimed to be a police officer and handcuffed the man. The victim’s wife thought police had taken her husband, but when she called the local Texas authorities, she discovered that they had not arrested her husband. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says the victim was beaten, blindfolded, gagged, and bound in duct tape. He was taken by the agents of the Gulf cartel to a nearby ranch on U.S. soil. Only then, say authorities, did the kidnappers realize they had taken an innocent man and that the victim was...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican soldiers have rescued 165 people kidnapped by a drug cartel and held for as long as three weeks in a one-story home alongside the U.S. border. National security spokesman Eduardo Sanchez says 150 victims were U.S.-bound migrants from Central America. Fourteen were Mexicans and one was from India.

The FBI is asking for help finding leads on a Rio Grande Valley Marine kidnapped at gunpoint in Mexico, the agency said Monday. Armando Torres III, 25, crossed over the Progreso International Bridge on May 14 to visit his father on a ranch near Los Indios, according to an agency news release. There, investigators believe armed intruders took Torres, his father Armando Torres II and uncle Salvador Torres shortly after they arrived. The younger Torres’ sister Cristina Torres, 24, who lives in Virginia, said she got a call from her cousin minutes after the gunmen raced away. “She saw a...

Bedouin tribes in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula implied on Thursday that they were better off living under Israeli rule and that they have been suffering since Israel withdrew from the region as part of the peace agreement with Egypt. The residents of the Sinai spoke to the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, after local tribesmen kidnapped seven Egyptian security personnel near the city of El-Arish. The seven were kidnapped by an unknown group in north Sinai while en route to Cairo. Local residents said the kidnapping was "retaliation" by Bedouin tribesmen for heavy-handed security policies adopted by the Egyptian interior ministry. Mohamed El-Asati,...

WESLACO - Mexican nationals studying at the University of Texas-Pan American are worried that the violence they fled from may be catching up with them on the U.S. side of the border. "I am from Miguel Aleman ... it's a small town an hour-and-a-half away from here," one student said. "I came for my studies," she said. "All my family is from Mexico," the student said. She said it was a way to flee the violence gripping border regions in Mexico. "I have to take some other precautions ... coming to school," she said. She asked to have her identity...

Long after he vanished in Iran, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson reappeared in a video and a series of photographs sent to his family over the past year, transforming a mysterious disappearance into a hostage standoff with an unknown kidnapper, The Associated Press has learned.

WASHINGTON — When the U.S. State Department announced this week that it finally is going to designate the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization, it was a nonevent for most of our countrymen. That's because few Americans know how deadly the organization is. For that we can thank those at Foggy Bottom who are wedded to the naive hope of a near-term "diplomatic breakthrough" in Afghanistan. Couple that misguided belief with the Obama administration's self-deception that the radical Islamic jihad against the West ended with the demise of Osama bin Laden and it's understandable why the Haqqani network...

'They killed with apparent impunity, effortlessly dodging capture by the world’s deadliest special forces. Nothing, it seemed, could stop Al Qaeda’s two top Iraqi terrorists as they orchestrated a campaign of high-profile kidnappings, car bombings and executions in Baghdad and beyond. At the height of their reign, one of them, Maher Ahmed Mahmoud az-Zubeidi, better known by his alias Abu Rami, was believed to have been responsible for the murders of 200 people each month. Yet perhaps even more ferocious was his charismatic co-leader, Abu Uthman, whose exploits in two battles in Fallujah earned him the nickname Abu Nimr –...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — There it was on video: Five heavily armed policemen barge into a hotel in western Mexico before dawn and march out with three handcuffed men in underwear. But police weren't making an arrest. Prosecutors say they apparently were taking orders from criminals. Just hours after the three were seized, they were found asphyxiated and beaten to death. Mexicans have become inured to lurid tales of police collaboration with narcotics gangs during 5 ½ years of a drug war that has cost more than 47,500 lives. But seldom can they actually see it occur, and the video...

HIDALGO COUNTY - Deputies think a kidnapping squad from Mexico is behind the disappearance of a missing Hidalgo County man. The Hidalgo County sheriff briefed us on the case file. Forty-year-old Armando Morfin was taken from his home in north Hidalgo County Friday. He reportedly dropped off his children at school. By the time he returned home, three men were waiting for him. His wife and 4-year-old child were tied up. They weren't harmed. By the time they freed themselves, the men were long gone along with Morfin. His van was found a few hours later on the side of...

Mexico City - An angry mob of villagers in central Mexico attacked and killed three men they accused of trying to kidnap two local residents. So far, 23 people have been arrested for the mob attack, prosecutors said. A spokesperson for the Mexico State Security Secretariat said the mob numbered "more than 500 people". An initial investigation showed "a group of six women incited local residents to attack three men, who they set on fire", said a statement from the Mexico state attorney general's office. Police tried to rescue the three men but succeeded in pulling only one of them...

EDINURG — A capital murder suspect made his involvement in the kidnapping and slaying of a coworker too obvious when he hid the body at his brother’s property, Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. A passer-by found the body of German Duque Gonzalez, 65, on Feb. 1 under a pile of tires in the 4600 block of Marshall Street north of Palmview. Gonzalez, a baker, left his Alton home at 1 a.m. that same morning to begin his bread-making shift at Valeria’s Bakery in Mission — a routine he had followed for the past two years. He never made it to work....

NEAR ALTON — Two men stepped down from a white truck at a house near Alton. A pair of Jeeps pulled up close behind. It was Memorial Day weekend 2011. The truck’s driver said he was a policeman, complete with handcuffs, a pistol and an embroidered shirt. He wasn’t a cop. But he handcuffed Ovidio Olivares Guerrero and loaded him into the truck and drove off, court records state. Guerrero hasn’t been seen since the pseudocops took him from his cousin’s house that day. And court records suggest he wasn’t even the target of a Gulf Cartel-ordered kidnapping. Olivares’ wife,...

Gunmen in the Mexican border city of Acuña kidnapped and killed three police officers, authorities said Monday. Acuña Public Safety Department said in a statement that the three were on patrol in the same unit when the assailants kidnapped them early Monday. The officer's bodies were found an hour later in a residential area of Acuña, which is across the border from Del Rio, Texas. They had been shot and their hands were handcuffed, the police department said. Authorities say the Zetas and the Sinaloa drug cartels are fighting each other to control smuggling routes in the state of Coahuila,...

HIDALGO — Police here rescued a kidnapping victim from the trunk of a car bound for Mexico Tuesday morning. Police are not releasing many details about the kidnapping because it is still under investigation and officers want to protect the victim from further danger, Captain Robert Vela of the Hidalgo Police Department said. A police officer stationed at the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge was inspecting southbound traffic when he came across a driver who looked younger than the average licensed driver, investigators said. At least one patrolman is always on duty at the port of entry to secure the toll booths...

NORTHEAST OF EDINBURG - An Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputy was shot Sunday afternoon during a traffic stop. It happened near the intersection of Val Verde Road and FM 2812 northeast of Edinburg. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino told CHANNEL 5 NEWS a deputy responded to a call about a alleged kidnapping in the area. En route the deputy spotted a truck matching the suspects' description. "They pulled him over. Another deputy drove up and helped him. We did what's called a felony stop (because) we knew that there were suspects involved in that vehicle," Trevino explained. He said the deputies...

Hamas leaders are telling Arabic media that Israel agreed to release terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit without a commitment from the terrorist group to stop kidnapping soldiers. Israel tried to get a commitment, but agreed to go ahead without one, according to sources quoted by the pan-Arabic paper Al-Hayat. Hamas also claimed that they managed to extract a promise from Israel not to harm the more than 1,000 terrorists to be released in exchange for Shalit in any way. The report contradicts what Shin Bet head Yoram Cohen said about the planned prisoner release. Cohen told journalists that the...