Free Republic

Leave it to CNN to worry that the Colombian government committed a war crime in its recent rescue of FARC hostages, including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a Seattle federal court to revoke the citizenship of a Washington state resident accused of serving the Nazis. Tuesday's complaint alleges that Yugoslavian-born Peter Egner, 86, in April 1941 joined the Nazi-controlled Security Police and Security Service in German-occupied Belgrade, Serbia, a Nazi mobile killing unit that participated in the mass murder of more than 17,000 Serbian civilians during World War II. According to the complaint, Egner has admitted volunteering to serve in the Security Police and Security Service and guarding prisoners as they were being transferred to concentration camps. Egner also admitted serving...

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) -- Colombian military intelligence used the Red Cross emblem in a rescue operation in which leftist guerrillas were duped into handing over 15 hostages, according to unpublished photographs and video viewed by CNN. Photographs of the Colombian military intelligence-led team that spearheaded the rescue, shown to CNN by a confidential military source, show one man wearing a bib with the Red Cross symbol. The military source said the three photos were taken moments before the mission took off to persuade the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels to release the hostages to a supposed international aid group...

The body of Alex R. Jimenez, a Lawrence-based soldier who was kidnapped more than a year ago, has been found in Iraq in a tragic ending to a family's wrenching hope for his return. Jimenez's father, Ramon "Andy'' Jimenez, was notified by Army servicemen who came to his home yesterday that his son's body was found two days ago by Iraqi authorities, who contacted their American counterparts. The elder Ramirez, who had held out hope that he would one day see his son's return, seemed to come to terms with the news. "It comforts you when you accept something, and...

Wisconsin's version of Ward Churchill, ultra left wingnut Kevin Barrett, has accused Wisconsin Congressman Ron Kind (D-WI03) of promulgating "an act of war propaganda whose knowing transmission arguably constitutes a war crime." Barrett sent out the following press release via email: ------------------------------------------------------- Barrett to Kind: Retract "Wiped off the Map" Lie! For Immediate Release - June 27, 2008 Contact: Dr. Kevin Barrett; 608-583-2132, kbarrett@merr.com Rolf Lindgren; 608-279-5889, rolfusaugustusadolphus@yahoo.com Kevin Barrett, the peace candidate for Congress who is challenging pro-war Democratic incumbent Ron Kind in Wisconsin's District 3, has written to Kind demanding that he retract his false and libelous statement...

FBI Monitoring 'Incident' At Ridley Township Plant RIDLEY TOWNSHIP, Pa. (CBS3/AP) ― Boeing Rotorcraft Systems temporarily shut down a production line for several hours Tuesday at its suburban Philadelphia plant because of possible irregularities discovered in two military helicopters. The company disclosed few specifics about why the shutdown of the H-47 Chinook helicopter line at the plant in Ridley Township, Pa., occurred. It said an investigation was under way and it was working with the Defense Contract Management Agency, which oversees military suppliers. Boeing officials said they discovered "irregularities" in two of the aircrafts that were being assembled at the...

Serbia is commemorating today nine years since the beginning of NATO air strikes on then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The strikes lasted 11 weeks and according to different sources between 1,200 and 2,500 people were killed. Serbia PM Vojislav Kostunica shall attend today the commemoration service dedicated to the victims of NATO aggression on FRY in 1999, while the Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovic shall meet with the pilots that took part in combat actions and members of the families of the pilots that lost their lives in those actions. Minister Sutanovac shall also lay the wreaths on the monument dedicated...

Thallium has been described as an ideal assassin's tool The UK government has flown antidote medicine to the Middle East after some Iraqis became seriously ill from eating cakes laced with the poison thallium. Two of the victims, both children, died after eating cake delivered to a military club in Baghdad. Others are being treated in hospital in the Jordanian capital, Amman. It is the first time the deadly toxin has been used since the downfall of Saddam Hussein, whose regime used it to kill its opponents. At least two of the poison victims, the secretary of the Iraqi...

Court finds 21 guilty of Madrid bombings By Leslie Crawford in Madrid Published: October 31 2007 14:27 | Last updated: October 31 2007 14:27 A Spanish court on Wednesday convicted 21 people of involvement in the country’s worst terrorist attack, the 2004 Madrid train bombings that traumatised a nation three days before a general election. Seven of the defendants were acquitted, including an Egyptian accused of masterminding the attacks. The March 11 bombings, which killed 191 commuters and injured more than 1,800 in the early morning rush hour, changed the course of Spanish politics. The conservative Popular party government...

Taliban terrorists tried talking an 8 year old boy into wearing a vest which would 'throw out flowers' when he pulled a cord. Luckily, this just didn't sound right and the kid asked some Afgan soldiers if this was true. They unstrapped the IED from the kid.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- American soldiers discovered a girls' school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged "death trap," the U.S. military said Thursday. The plot at the Huda Girls' school in Tarmiya was a "sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims," military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said. The military suspects the plot was the work of al Qaeda, because of its nature and sophistication, Caldwell said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. The plot was uncovered Saturday, when troopers in the Salaheddin province found detonating wire across the street...

They looked like a Vauxhall Conference football team being led out at Wembley by Nora Batty before the final of the Leyland DAF trophy. Fourteen men kitted out in ill-fitting suits from the local branch of John Collier, John Collier, the window to watch, and a dumpy bird in a Les Dawson headscarf. They're coming home, they're coming home, they're coming. . . Blink and it could have been the Guildford branch of the Manchester United supporters' club arriving back at the airport, complaining about being roughed up by the Italian riot police. I'm sorry if this is going to...

BAGHDAD, Jan. 30 — Investigators believe that attackers who used American-style uniforms and weapons to infiltrate a secure compound and kill five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20 may have been trained and financed by Iranian agents, according to American and Iraqi officials knowledgeable about the probe.

Four American soldiers were abducted during a sophisticated sneak attack last week in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, the U.S. military confirmed Friday. It said three were shot to death and a fourth was mortally wounded with a gunshot to the head when they were found in a neighboring province, far from the compound where they were captured. Two of the four were handcuffed together in the back seat of an SUV near the southern Iraqi town of Mahawil. A third dead soldier was on the ground nearby. The fourth soldier died on the way to the hospital, the...

Michael Ignatieff, the former Harvard human rights professor and current candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, has made two serious misstatements regarding the recent war between Hezbollah and Israel, and most particularly the Israeli military actions in the Lebanese town of Qana. Back in August, Ignatieff said that he was "not losing sleep" over the attack in which 29 civilians, who had sought refuge in a building, were killed when the Israeli air force fired a missile at what it believed was a Hezbollah rocket-launching site. Every humane person -- and Ignatieff is surely that --...

IRAQI officers loyal to Saddam Hussain filmed their cold-blooded murder of two British bomb disposal officers who were captured after a roadside ambush.An inquest was told that Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth, 36, and Sapper Luke Allsopp, 24, thought that they were being taken to hospital for treatment, but instead they were moved to a compound run by Saddam’s military intelligence. The harrowing ordeal lasted for hours until Iraqi agents killed the pair. The soldiers were buried in a shallow grave. At the inquest yesterday the coroner, Andrew Walker, severely criticised army chiefs for failing to ensure that the soldiers avoided...

<p>Fox News reporting a new video is out. It shows two dead american soldiers burned and being dragged through the streets.</p> <p>There is a belief that they are the bodies of troopers Tucker and Menchaca.</p>

LONDON, England (CNN) -- CNN's Becky Anderson interviews Peter Herbert, a British human rights lawyer who visited Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe-bomber" in a U.S. jail in 2002. Herbert, who had no role in Reid's defense, was interviewed at his office in London. Here is the full transcript: Anderson: So you traveled to see him? (Watch the interview -- 3:04) ... Q. Well, you talked at length I believe and perhaps with more detail than you might have expected about what had happened that day and indeed why Richard Reid had been involved. When you asked him why young men...

TEL AVIV, Israel — In the least friendly fire imaginable, Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon encountered Hezbollah wearing Israel Defense Force uniforms, the Jewish state's leading investigative news program reported. During a battle on the evening of August 6 and early hours of August 7, in the town of Hule, an IDF unit found two Hezbollah dressed in Israeli fatigues and helmets in a civilian home. The battlefield commander was forced to order his men to remove the white hats they wear on their helmets to distinguish his men from the enemy. An embedded reporter, Itai Engel, from the weekly...

An Iraqi insurgent group said it attacked U.S. forces near Baghdad by setting off explosives attached to a dog, according to a video posted on the Internet on Sunday. A distant shot in a video issued by the group appeared to show a dog sitting on the side of a road as a military vehicle approached, moments before a large explosion occurred. Iraq's Jihadi Factions, which has claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, said it carried out the attack in the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad, targeting U.S. forces, without giving a date.

NORTH COUNTY ---- The focus at Camp Pendleton is about to shift from teaching troops the latest warfare techniques to trying Marines for alleged war crimes in Iraq. Separate cases involving two Camp Pendleton units allege members of two platoons violated the Pentagon's rules of engagement and killed 25 Iraqis, many of whom authorities say were clearly noncombatants. One case, which arises out of the slaying of a 52-year-old Iraqi man in the village of Hamdania on April 26, has landed seven Marines and a Navy corpsman in the base brig on charges of premeditated murder and kidnapping. The other...

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policymakers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal. The move by the administration is the latest effort to deal with treatment of those taken into custody in the war on terror. At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA, and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding were authorized by administration officials. A separate law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, applies to the military. The Washington...

(If you're thinking what you're thinking is just a joke; you might be horrified to know that any play on words in the original title is intentional.) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- New York, NY- July, 26 2006—- A presidential bust of Hillary Clinton is set to be unveiled at the Museum of Sex on August 9, 2006 at 10 am. Accentuating her sexual power and bolstered by the presidential seal, The Presidential Bust of Hillary Rodham Clinton: The First Woman President of the United States of America will be officially open for public viewing on August 9 for a limited six...

....' UN human rights chief Louise Arbour suggested Wednesday that the military operations being carried out in Lebanon, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories could be considered war crimes. The obligation to protect civilians during hostilities is entrenched in international law, "which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity," Arbour said in a statement. "The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control," she added. ' Now, this is a woman that was chief prosecutor of ICTY directly indicting Slobodan...

A council in the Australian city of Sydney is taking radical measures against car-revving youths - the calming tones of singer Barry Manilow. Officials in Rockdale say that local youths have been hanging around in car parks, revving their engines and generally annoying residents. So the council has decided to strike back. From July, Barry Manilow's greatest hits will be piped into one car park in a bid to drive the youths away.

Hezbollah rockets rained on the northern part of the country on Thursday, and this resort, tucked into the far northwestern corner, was perhaps the hardest hit. *** The second day of heavy shooting across the border by the Lebanese militant group began early in the morning, when one rocket slammed into an open field just 200 yards from Western Galilee Hospital, the town’s main medical center. An apartment building took a direct hit and burst into flames. One woman was killed while on the balcony of her apartment in another building. A man also died in the town of Safad....

Slain soldier's brother skeptical of group's claim He doubts that Menchaca, a 2nd soldier could have been linked to rape suspects HARLINGEN - The brother of slain Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca said Tuesday that he is skeptical of an al-Qaida-linked group's claim that it killed Menchaca and another U.S. soldier more than three months after troops from their unit allegedly raped and killed a young Iraqi woman. Julio Cesar Vasquez, the older brother of Menchaca, said he does not think the suspected al-Qaida insurgents could have linked the two slain soldiers to the rape suspects. ''It could be, but how...

snip…Privates Tucker and Menchaca were not simply ambushed, taken prisoner and killed. "The torture was something unnatural," said Major General Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim of Iraq's Defense Ministry, hinting at the state of the soldiers' remains. The corpses were so mutilated that they could be positively identified only through DNA testing. Here, then, is the enemy we face in Iraq: not nationalists or extremists or even fanatics, but something like a band of real-life Hannibal Lecters for whom human slaughter is both business and religious fulfillment. Following the killing, an Internet statement said to be from the Mujahadeen Shura Council...

CAIRO, Egypt - The new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq killed two U.S. soldiers whom the group abducted last week, an insurgent umbrella group said in a Web statement posted Tuesday. The statement, which could not be authenticated, said the two soldiers were "slaughtered," suggesting they had been beheaded by Abu Hamza al-Muhajer. The Arabic word used in the statement, "nahr," is used for the slaughtering of sheep by cutting the throat and has been used in past statements to refer to beheadings. The claim of responsibility was posted on an Islamic militant Web site where insurgent groups regularly post...

Updated: 13:36, Monday June 19, 2006 A terrorist group linked to al Qaeda says it has kidnapped two US soldiers in Iraq.In a statement posted on the internet, it said the pair were snatched near Yusufiya.  American and Iraqi forces have been searching for two soldiers who went missing after an attack on a checkpoint near Yusufiya on Friday.One solider was killed in the attack.More follows ...

San Diego attorney representing a Navy corpsman being held in the Camp Pendleton brig in connection with the alleged killing of an Iraqi civilian in April has issued a written statement calling for the news media and public to avoid a rush to judgment. He also announced a Web site defense fund has been established for his client. Jeremiah Sullivan III also complained in the statement that the unnamed corpsman is under more restrictions than "known terrorists in military facilities around the world." "During the one brief period per day he is allowed to utilize the recreational yard, my client...

U.S. Lawmaker Blasts Yasukuni Visits MAY 15, 2006 03:10 by Young-A Soh (sya@donga.com) U.S. political leaders voiced strong concerns over the Japanese prime minister�fs paying respects at the Yasukuni Shrine. Thus, it is expected that the controversies over the Yasukuni Shrine will heat up in Japan with its election of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) president slated for this September. Stop Paying Visits to the Shrine If to Give an Address at the U.S. Congress – The Asahi Shimbun reported on May 13 that the U.S. House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (Republican, picture) demanded that Japanese Prime...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A video posted on the Internet Wednesday in the name of an extremist group claimed to show Iraqi insurgents dragging the burning body of a U.S. pilot on the ground after the crash of an Apache helicopter. Parts of the video were blurry, and the face of the man being dragged was not shown. His clothes were so tattered it was impossible to tell if he was wearing an American military uniform, but he appeared to be wearing military fatigues. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060405/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_helicopter_video

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shortly after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine in a western Iraqi town, American troops went into nearby houses and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old-girl, residents say. The military is investigating possible misconduct by the Marines and confirms there is a video, which Time Magazine says shows the aftermath of the Marines' assault. Residents contacted by The Associated Press described what happened after the Nov. 19 roadside bomb in the town of Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, as "a massacre." Khaled Ahmed Rsayef, whose brother and six other members of...

Poles pleaded with Hitler to free them from Stalin's grip New documents on attempts to Polish officers from Soviet POW camps have been found in the archives of the German Foreign Office. Russians continued negotiations concerning freeing a few hundreds Polish army officers even long after they had been shot death in the spring of 1940 - a Polish institute probing Nazi and Stalinist crimes has found out. Families of a few hundreds of Polish officers wrote letters to German Foreign Office pointing out their German origin or other kinds of connection to get their husbands, brothers and fathers back...

One way of measuring any terrorist attack is to look at whether the killers accomplished everything they set out to. On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida set out to hijack four planes and succeeded in seizing every one. Had the killers attempted to take another 30 jets between 7:30 and 9 that morning, who can doubt that they'd have maintained their pristine 100 percent success rate? Throughout the IRA's long war against the British Crown, two generations of politicians pointed out that there would always be the odd ''crack in the system'' through which the determined terrorist would slip. But on...

One way of measuring any terrorist attack is to look at whether the killers accomplished everything they set out to. On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida set out to hijack four planes and succeeded in seizing every one. Had the killers attempted to take another 30 jets between 7:30 and 9 that morning, who can doubt that they'd have maintained their pristine 100 percent success rate? Throughout the IRA's long war against the British Crown, two generations of politicians pointed out that there would always be the odd ''crack in the system'' through which the determined terrorist would slip. But on...

Ten years after Radovan Karadzic's troops killed 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, the former Serb leader remains at large. In this remarkable report from the heart of Bosnia, Antony Barnett goes on the trail of Europe's most notorious war criminal What strikes you first is the colour of the house. As you drive along the bumpy stone road that leads to the family home of Dr Radovan Karadzic, Europe's most wanted war criminal, its garish pink exterior bursts out in front of you. But despite its bright facade, it is a house that hides many dark secrets. On Monday 11 July...

MI6 and the Croatian general       By Nick Thorpe   BBC News, Dubrovnik   European intelligence services have joined forces in the search for Croatian General Ante Gotovina, indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague for alleged war crimes against Serbia in 1995. But as Nick Thorpe finds out, tracking him down is proving a difficult task. Croatian General Ante Gotovina was indicted for war crimes in 2001 Franjo Turek suggests we meet in the Dubrovnik cafe in central Zagreb. He is sitting in the corner by the window when I arrive, looking younger, but...

East Asia countries have continued to criticized Japan for the ignorance of the war crimes during World War II. The tensions have rised between China and Japan for the escalation of violent protests in China against Japan. Meanwhile, Japanese government officials still visit the Yasukuni Shrine every year to pray for the dead soldiers, which the shrine also includes the top officials engaged in war crime during the war, Japan has continued to apologized in public about the war crimes by the Japanese government in the past, which the victims of other countries in Asia has not recognized. The people...

ZAGREB - Croatia is ready to extradite former Macedonian interior minister Ljube Boskovski, currently in jail in the country, to the UN war crimes tribunal that charged him with war crimes, Justice Minister Vesna Skare-Ozbolt said Monday. -snip- Boskovski, who has both Croatian and Macedonian citizenship, was arrested and detained in Croatia in August last year on a warrant issued by Skopje accusing him of the murder of seven South Asian immigrants in 2002. In February Zagreb indicted him over the same charges. A Macedonian interior ministry spokeswoman said in Skopje earlier Monday that Boskovski and his bodyguard Johan Trculovski...

Ansar al-Sunna claims attack on US base in Mosul: website AFP: 12/21/2004 DUBAI, Dec 21 (AFP) - The Al-Qaeda linked Army of Ansar al-Sunna group claimed responsibility for an attack against a US military base Tuesday in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which reportedly killed at least 22 people, in a statement attributed to it on an Islamist website. "One of the mujahedeen of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna carried out a martyrdom-seeking (suicide) operation in a restaurant of the infidel occupation forces at the Ghazlani camp in Mosul," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently confirmed. US...

Abidjan - French troops fired "directly" at the crowd without warning during an anti-French rally outside an Abidjan hotel earlier this month, an Ivorian police colonel charged on Sunday. Georges Guiai Bi Poin, commander of the Abidjan police academy, who was in charge of about 60 police officers on duty outside the Ivoire hotel to stop demonstrators from storming the building, told AFP that "French troops fired directly into the crowd. "They opened fire on the orders of their chief, colonel D'Estremon. Without warning." Throughout the night Guiai Bi Poin was at colonel D'Estremon's side in the hotel lobby. Almost...

Marines searching for holdout guerrillas in Fallujah yesterday discovered the mutilated body of a blond woman lying in the street under a blood-soaked cloth — and officials believe it could be one of two Western women kidnapped last month. The body could not be immediately identified, but Margaret Hassan, 59, a Briton who runs Iraq's division of CARE International, and Polish-born Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, are the only kidnapped women who remain unaccounted for. As U.S. and Iraqi troops pushed deeper into devastated Fallujah, other kidnappers who last week snatched relatives of the prime minister announced that they had...

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - French forces opened fire on loyalist crowds Tuesday outside a makeshift French military post, witnesses said. A leading hospital reported seven killed and more than 200 wounded. The French military force said it was investigating and refused to immediately comment.

You're a Marine at a checkpoint somewhere in Iraq, watching cars and trucks streaming by -- Iraqis on their way to work or shopping or the mosque. How do you figure out which vehicle may be another deadly bomb? And what do you do when you spot a "suspicious" car? These unanswerable questions put the life-threatening challenges facing our troops in Iraq into grim perspective. Since the war in Iraq began we at TCS have discussed the insidious nature of car bombs and their effect on human beings. We have emphasized that car bombings are not random terrorist acts, but...

HOME from Iraq, Mohammed Raad, 27, a lorry driver from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, has a probable unique but unenviable claim to fame. Survivor: Mohammed Raad He may be the only man in the world to have been taken hostage by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, watched a fellow captive beheaded, and survived to tell the tale. Pale and gaunt, and chain-smoking, his eyes brimmed with tears and his foot tapped nervously on the floor of his home in the hillside village of Bednayel yesterday as he told The Times of his ordeal. “I thank God I’m still alive, even though...

The bloody siege of a Russian school by Chechen rebels brought widespread condemnation and soul-searching in the Islamic world yesterday. Arab newspapers and television broadcasts were full of dramatic photographs of the children killed and injured in the siege by Islamic rebels demanding Chechen independence from Russia. Commentators and clerics put a harsh spotlight on those who kill and maim in Islam's name. "What is the guilt of those children? Why should they be responsible for your conflict with the government?" Egypt's top Muslim cleric, Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, asked during a sermon in Banha, 30 miles north of...

TIGER FORCE - Ex-officer may face justice for atrocities - Army lawyer calls for war-crime charge By JOE MAHR, BLADE STAFF WRITER Three decades after an Army platoon repeatedly executed unarmed civilians and prisoners in Vietnam, a military lawyer has recommended the unit's former commander be brought up on a war-crime charge. In what would be an unprecedented event, retired Maj. James Hawkins could face a military court-martial regarding his actions commanding a platoon known as Tiger Force that killed hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children 37 years ago, The Blade has learned. As the scope of war crimes...

A List Foreigners Hostage in Iraq By The Associated Press Insurgents in Iraq (news - web sites) have kidnapped dozens of people in their campaign to drive out coalition forces and hamper reconstruction: HELD HOSTAGE _Twelve Nepalese workers. Kidnapped August 23, four days after crossing border while working for Jordan-based construction company. Iraqi militant group claimed responsibility. _Aytullah Gezmen, of Turkey. Kidnapped July 27 or 28. Worked for Bilintur, Turkish company providing laundry service for Jordanian firm in Iraq. _Mustafa Koksal and Durmus Kumdereli, Turkish truck drivers. Kidnapped Aug. 14 outside Mosul after delivering water to U.S. base in Baghdad....