Free Republic

At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall, Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, asked Attorney General Eric Holder to produce a list of Department of Justice employees who had been involved in representing detainees. Holder said he’d consider the request.Three months later he denied it. In a letter to Grassley on February 18, Holder acknowledged that nine Justice Department officials had worked on behalf of detainees before joining the Obama administration. The names of two of those officials—Jennifer Daskal and Neal Katyal—had been reported publicly. But Holder refused to disclose the other seven and allowed that...

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASES Sunday, December 20, 2009 United States Transfers 12 Guantanamo Bay Detainees to Afghanistan, Yemen and the Somaliland Region Twelve detainees have been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, Yemen and the Somaliland region. As directed by the President’s Jan. 22, 2009 Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of each of these cases. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including potential threat, mitigation measures and the likelihood of success in habeas litigation, the detainees were...

Somalia May 6 (Garowe Online) - Islamist hardliners in southern Somalia have showcased public films showing grotesque violence and have destroyed gravesites, Radio Garowe reports. Al Shabaab hardliners in the southern port of Kismayo constructed large screens to portray real-life film footage recorded from "wars in Somalia, Palestine and Afghanistan." Kismayo residents described the films as bloody and violent, showing gruesome images of civilians being killed by foreign militaries. "If I take Mogadishu for example, the films showed Ethiopian troops and AMISOM [African Union] troops shelling civilian areas, causing many deaths," said one film viewer. Some of the films showed...

eavy fighting erupted today in Mogadishu between insurgents and AMISOM peacekeepers at a base of the African Union peace mission in Somalia, witnesses told the local media. Based on these accounts, a commando fired rocket propelled grenades in the KM4 base, a key crossing in southern Mogadishu. Radio Shabelle reports that it is unknown if there were any casualties. News is also unclear from the Afgoi district, in the Lower Shabelle region that surrounds Mogadishu: according to some local reporters, a blast severely damaged an Ethiopian military truck. Somalia, torn by a never resolved civil war since 1991, is in...

His Holiness Abune Dioskoros, Patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church, who is currently in Europe on spiritual visit, said that the Eritrea people have religions of their own dating back to centuries on the basis of which they have been coexisting in peace and harmony. And as such, they are not in need of any religion from foreigners, he elaborated. During his stay in the Italian city of Milan from December 5 to 8, the Patriarch was accorded warm welcome by heads of the Office of the Eritrean Consul General, the Synod of the St. Mary Church and a...

Somaliland, which has been seeking recognition from the international community for its independent status from the rest of Somalia, is said to be increasing security ties with France and other western nations. VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu has the story from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi. Associate Professor Iqbal Jhazbhay at the University of South Africa tells VOA that a French Special Forces operation in April that enabled France to take six captured Somali pirates back to Paris was partly accomplished with the help of Somaliland authorities. "The French government decided to use the landing strip in Berbera to undertake...

Somalia is officially an Islamic state and conversion is prohibited. The country has a population of approximately 8.3 million, nearly all of them Sunni Muslims. There is a small, extremely low-profile Christian community. According to the International Religious Freedom Report 2006 issued by the US State Department last Friday, proselytizing for any religion except Islam is prohibited in Puntland and Somaliland and effectively blocked by informal social consensus elsewhere in the country. Somalia has had no government since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991. The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which grew out of individual courts' efforts to establish...

Hargeisa(Somaliland Net) - , - Young people in Somaliland are so wild about the Internet and cyber-dating that local associations and the United Nations children's agency are out to ensure education and ease tensions. Streets in Hargeisa, is far more peaceful than most of the lawless country, empty of teenagers in late afternoons as they wait their turn in Internet cafes to send a flurry of instant messages to distant paramours. Since they have much increased access to the Web, Somaliland's teenage girls are frequently lured into marriage abroad hoping to enjoy the economic benefits of natives living elsewhere, primarily...

A mayor in breakaway Somaliland is trying to cut down on the problems caused by khat, a mild stimulant, by moving dealers to the outskirts of the city. "Out of sight, out of mind," the mayor hopes Hussein Mohamud Jiir, mayor of the capital Hargeisa, has set aside tracts of land where he hopes to install the khat merchants. Dealers, however, say there is no point trying to restrict their activities. Khat is a natural amphetamine derived from the leaves of the catha edilus plant. The problem of addiction in Somaliland - which has broken away from Somalia - is...