Romania’s Bucharest Court of Appeal has ordered Călin Georgescu into preventive detention for 30 days, overturning a lower court ruling that allowed the former presidential frontrunner to remain free under judicial supervision.

Călin Georgescu is the first political prisoner since the 1989 Revolution.

Let this be clear to everyone: today, the system is PSD–PNL–USR. All appointments to leadership positions within the prosecutors’ offices and the police are politically driven.

After reading the judge’s… pic.twitter.com/cRnsE5WAEf

— Remi 11 (@chiroban_r) September 29, 2026

The decision sends the figure at the center of Romania’s conservative, anti-globalist camp—and the most trusted politician in the country, according to some polls—back behind bars.

The move has further intensified accusations from his conservative Romanians that the country’s post-2024 establishment is using prosecutors and courts to contain a movement it has struggled, and even failed, to contain at the ballot box.

DIICOT prosecutors secured the reversal after challenging the Bucharest Tribunal’s refusal to imprison Georgescu while the €1.1 million fraud investigation proceeds. Businessman Ionel Rusen was also ordered into preventive detention, with the Court of Appeal’s ruling final.

Even the appellate panel was reportedly divided over whether detention was justified. Two judges disagreed, requiring a third to resolve the split in favor of incarceration—a detail Georgescu’s defenders have seized upon as evidence that the prosecution’s demand was hardly self-evident.

Georgescu’s lawyer, Mircea Sinescu, reacted with fury. “It is a hallucinatory solution!” he said, adding that “paper supports anything,” according to the Romanian account of the ruling. Pasted markdown
The contrast with last week could scarcely be sharper. Bucharest Tribunal Judge Vlad Andriescu had rejected preventive detention and instead placed Georgescu and Rusen under judicial control for 60 days while prosecutors continued their investigation.

More damaging politically for DIICOT, the lower-court reasoning reportedly questioned whether prosecutors had concretely established the precise role each defendant allegedly played in the supposed fraud. The judge called for investigators to clarify how the alleged deception was actually carried out rather than relying on a broadly asserted criminal association.

That earlier ruling did not amount to exoneration. The judge restricted Georgescu and Rusen from leaving Romania after considering intercepted conversations concerning a possible move to Tuscany, but concluded that imprisonment was not then necessary.

When Georgescu emerged from court after that decision, supporters greeted him with chants of “Freedom!”, “Călin, we love you!” and demands for the cancelled presidential runoff to be restored. Georgescu told the crowd that he was innocent and described the cases against him as “politically motivated.”

He also attacked what he called Romania’s “neo-Marxist and neo-Phanariot system,” casting his confrontation with prosecutors as something larger than one criminal file. That language reflects a conservative, sovereigntist movement that increasingly views Romania’s political, judicial and security establishment as a single entrenched structure defending the country’s existing order, which is said to take its orders from Brussels and Paris.

DIICOT, an institution that has a storied history of deep corruption, rejects that political interpretation and says it is pursuing an ordinary organized-crime and fraud case. Prosecutors allege Georgescu and two other men deceived businessman Răzvan Leu into providing roughly €1.1 million after promising access to a €15 million foreign credit facility that allegedly never materialized.

Those allegations remain unproven, and preventive detention is not a criminal conviction. Georgescu denies wrongdoing, meaning prosecutors will ultimately have to demonstrate both that the alleged scheme existed as described and that he knowingly played the role attributed to him.

The age of the underlying allegations has nevertheless become another rallying point for his supporters. The purported financial activity dates back to 2021, while the complaint moved into the DIICOT investigation in 2024, prompting Georgescu’s camp to ask why an old financial dispute has produced such an aggressive response only after he became Romania’s most prominent anti-establishment figure.

That perception hardened after the September 21 operation at his home. Georgescu was stopped in traffic, taken to his Mogoșoaia residence during searches lasting nearly nine hours, brought to DIICOT headquarters and later led outside in handcuffs before assembled cameras and supporters.

According to the reporting supplied, one of Georgescu’s sons was with him when officers stopped him, while his wife and younger child were at home when masked units arrived.

Five addresses were searched across Bucharest and nearby localities, turning the investigation into the kind of heavily visual police operation that was always likely to acquire political meaning.

Romanian Regime Arrests Presidential Election Winner — Raid Drags Georgescu to Jail in Front of His Son After Annulled Election

For AUR and Georgescu’s supporters, however, the image that endured was simpler: the winner of the first round of Romania’s 2024 presidential election being paraded in handcuffs less than two years after the state cancelled the election he had unexpectedly led. That sequence has become the emotional center of a much broader revolt against what conservatives routinely describe as Romania’s globalist regime.

The Constitutional Court annulled that election after intelligence services alleged, without providing any evidence, Russian-linked online interference, campaign irregularities and manipulation favoring Georgescu. To this day they have failed to provide evidence supporting their extraordinary claim, which effectively ended Romanian democracy. US Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and US State Department have all slammed the decision to annul the presidential election and effectively suspend democracy.

Following Georgescu’s earlier detention, the AUR leader George Simion warned, “Any of us could be next. Stop the abuses! Romania is a dictatorship!” — a political accusation that captures AUR’s interpretation of the crackdown, rather than an independent legal description of the Romanian state.

The scale of AUR’s support gives that rhetoric considerably more weight than it would have carried several years ago. INSCOP’s September survey placed AUR at 39.7% among respondents expressing a party preference and 40.2% among those expressing a preference who also said they were certain to vote.

PSD stood at 18.7%, PNL at 16.3% and USR at 9% among respondents expressing a party choice, leaving AUR with roughly twice the support of its nearest rival in that survey. The poll interviewed 1,100 adults between September 1 and 7 and reported a maximum sampling error of ±3 percentage points.

Those figures do not prove AUR’s allegations about the courts or prosecutors, but they expose the danger for Romania’s establishment of treating the sovereigntist challenge as a marginal phenomenon. When a movement polling around 40% watches one of its defining political figures repeatedly investigated, searched, handcuffed and detained, every prosecutorial decision inevitably becomes part of the country’s larger struggle over state legitimacy.

The Romanian state now faces a credibility test considerably larger than Georgescu’s next 30 days in detention. Prosecutors must show that the fraud case rests on evidence strong enough to withstand scrutiny, while institutions already damaged by the extraordinary 2024 annulment must convince millions of distrustful voters that the state is enforcing law rather than protecting an embattled political order from the sovereigntist movement now dominating the polls.

The post Romania’s Lawless Globalist State Puts Georgescu Back Behind Bars for 30 Days After First Cancelling the Election He Won appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The September 30 withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq will end the use of that country as a military platform for counterterrorism operations in Syria. The departure follows the U.S. exit from Syrian bases, including Qasrak air base in Hasakah province on April 16.

Intelligence and assets in Jordan and the Gulf will support future counter-ISIS cooperation, according to the Atlantic Council. Preventing the group’s resurgence will depend more heavily on Damascus. Syria joined the coalition against ISIS in November 2025, when al-Sharaa visited Washington. Its Interior Ministry also cooperates with American personnel in Damascus to track the group’s remnants.

The problem with this arrangement is that Syria’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has ties to ISIS and al-Qaeda and fought Kurdish forces before coming to power.

Al-Sharaa, known during his militant career as Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, began in al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the group that later became ISIS. According to the State Department, AQI leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sent al-Jawlani to Syria in late 2011 to organize terrorist cells that became the al-Nusrah Front. In April 2013, Baghdadi announced that AQI and al-Nusrah would merge as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Al-Jawlani rejected the merger, broke with ISIS, and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In May 2013, the State Department designated al-Jawlani a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and later offered up to $10 million for information on his location. His group, later renamed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led the offensive that toppled Assad in December 2024. Washington revoked HTS’s terrorist designation effective July 8, 2025, citing the group’s dissolution and the Syrian government’s commitment to combat terrorism.

Analysts have warned that Damascus cannot be trusted to protect the Kurds because its army is composed of former Islamic extremists. Syria’s new army is built around HTS, the successor to al-Nusrah, which the State Department described as al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.

Damascus also incorporated foreign jihadists. At least six foreign nationals were among the Defense Ministry’s 49 military appointments in December 2024, including Albanian Abdul Jashari, a U.S.-designated terrorist. Three were appointed brigadier generals: Turkish citizen Omar Mohammed Jaftashi, Jordanian citizen Abdul Rahman Hussein al-Khatib, and Abdulaziz Dawood Khudaberdi, commander of the Turkistan Islamic Party’s (TIP) forces in Syria.

In June 2025, Syrian defense officials said about 3,500 foreign fighters, mainly Uyghur TIP members, would join the army’s newly formed 84th Division. A TIP political official told Reuters the group had officially dissolved and integrated into the army. Asked whether Washington approved, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack said there was “an understanding, with transparency.”

The State Department describes the TIP as a violent extremist group active in Syria and Afghanistan. The Long War Journal identifies it as an al-Qaeda-affiliated group that has long operated within the Taliban-al-Qaeda axis. In a 2016 edition of its Arabic-language publication, the TIP stated that establishing an Islamic caliphate was its primary objective.

Beijing designates the TIP as a terrorist group, but the United States does not designate it under that name. In November 2020, the State Department removed the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from the Terrorist Exclusion List, saying it had seen no credible evidence for more than a decade that the group still existed. Washington still lists ETIM as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist to comply with UN obligations. The State Department says Beijing inaccurately labels the TIP as ETIM.

The UN Security Council lists ETIM under the alias Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party. It identified the group’s leader, Abdul Haq, as a member of al-Qaeda’s Shura Council as of 2005. The U.S. Treasury designated him in 2009.

Washington required no enforceable commitments to protect minorities and set no prohibition on integrating jihadists into the new military. In 2025, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies wrote that al-Sharaa had failed to address the SDF’s core security concerns, including the threat from within the army’s own ranks.

In May 2026, FDD urged Washington to pressure Damascus to remove or demote foreign fighters in its security forces, particularly members of U.S.-designated terrorist organizations serving in the army. Syria scholar Joshua Landis said U.S. Central Command does not trust the Syrian military to take part in actual raids.

A member of Syria’s security forces carried out the December 13, 2025, attack near Palmyra, a Syrian government official confirmed. CENTCOM identified him as a lone ISIS gunman. He killed two U.S. service members and an American civilian interpreter and wounded three other soldiers at the gate of a fortified command facility belonging to the Syrian Internal Security Forces leadership. The attack came one month after Damascus entered the counter-ISIS coalition.

The national army has also fought the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Washington’s former key partner against ISIS. Aleppo’s two Kurdish-majority neighborhoods were the first targets of the government’s January 6 offensive. Fighting displaced up to 148,000 people and ended with the SDF’s withdrawal from Aleppo on January 10.

The Rojava Information Center, a research group based in northeast Syria, reviewed about 180 pieces of visual material showing abuses against SDF personnel and mostly Kurdish civilians. Army personnel and affiliated forces tortured and beat detainees, subjected them to religious and racial insults, and forced them to recite the Shahada.

Damascus has also absorbed the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) into its military. After Assad’s fall, Mohammed al-Jassem’s faction, known as Amshat, became the army’s 62nd Division. Ahmad al-Hayes, known as Abu Hatem Shaqra, led Ahrar al-Sharqiya and took command of the 86th Division.

When the U.S. Treasury sanctioned al-Jassem in 2023, it said he directed brigade members to forcibly displace Kurdish residents, seize their property, and kidnap residents for ransom. In 2021, Treasury sanctioned Ahrar al-Sharqiya for crimes against civilians, particularly Syrian Kurds, including unlawful killings, abductions, torture, and property seizures. It also said the group had incorporated former ISIS members. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the group had been implicated in the unlawful killing of Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf in October 2019.

In August 2026, the army removed al-Jassem, Abu Hatem Shaqra, and Hamza Division commander Sayf Bulad from their command posts. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the SDF had made al-Jassem’s removal a condition for its integration into the military.

The SDF’s integration into Syrian army brigades culminated in commander Mazloum Abdi’s August 25 announcement that the group had dissolved. After September 30, Damascus will carry more of the responsibility for preventing an ISIS resurgence in Syria, with an army whose ranks include former HTS fighters, members of the dissolved TIP, former SNA factions sanctioned for abuses against Kurds, and the former SDF fighters those factions once fought.

The post Washington’s Counter-ISIS Partner in Syria Built Its Army Around Jihadists appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth will make major cuts to the military’s generals and admirals.

Hegseth approved 20% reductions for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

The new reductions will go into effect by January 1, 2027.

Fox News reported:

War Secretary Pete Hegseth will announce plans to reduce by 20% the number of positions reserved for generals and admirals during his State of the Force address on Wednesday.

Hegseth approved reduction plans for the Army, Navy, Air Force and the military’s joint pool earlier this month, according to memos seen by Fox News Digital. The services were directed to implement the plans and complete the reductions by Jan. 1, 2027.

Wednesday’s address in Quantico, Va. is expected to lay out Hegseth’s priorities for the military in the year ahead, with the reduction in senior leadership positions among the changes he will unveil.

The new target doubles the 10% overall reduction in general and flag officer positions Hegseth ordered last year as part of his effort to streamline the military’s senior ranks. That earlier directive separately called for a 20% reduction in active-duty four-star positions and a 20% reduction in National Guard general officers.

Hegseth fired several senior generals this year.

In April, Hegseth fired two more Army Generals after he ousted Army Chief of Staff General Randy George.

General George served in the role under Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

“General Randy A. George will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said.

The post Another Pentagon Shakeup: Hegseth to Make Major Cuts to Military’s Generals and Admirals appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The woman who reported a possible attack at a U.S. bomber base in England still has not been formally interviewed by police. The five men arrested for possessing explosives and suspected terrorism were released on bail after 38 hours. Britain’s defense secretary called the witness’s account “a partial picture.”

President Trump criticized their release, saying he “wouldn’t have done that.” Meanwhile, a British anti-migration activist who damaged a migrant boat was denied bail and remains in jail, highlighting a clear contrast. The official accounts from Britain and the United States do not match, and neither aligns with the witness’s story.

RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire is the main U.S. Air Force bomber base in Britain and the only one in Europe. Early on September 27, a local farmer saw three unusual white vans blocking her lane near the base. She noticed eight to ten men in dark clothes, some with hoods or balaclavas, running toward the fields and the base. When she couldn’t reach the local police, she called 999 (911). Armed officers arrived within 10 minutes and arrested five men near the perimeter. She later said that no official had contacted her about what she saw.

Defense Secretary Wes Streeting MP thanked the witness but said her account gave only “a partial picture,” which is now the official stance. Trump said the suspects had been “under view for a long time” and planned “big damage,” adding he would not have released them. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it a “serious foreign threat” and suggested foreign involvement.

U.S. National Security Advisor John Triumos said Washington was “concerned by the rapid release” and was watching the situation closely. British reports said the arrests were not based on intelligence. U.S. officials pointed to possible foreign involvement, while UK police kept an open mind. Iran denied any role. The different accounts have not been resolved.

Nigel Farage MP said he had long warned about Iranian agents entering the country through Channel crossings and called for the suspects’ identities to be made public. Several activist groups highlighted the difference between the immediate jailing of a British anti-migrant protester and the bail given to the Fairford suspects, calling it two-tier justice.

Police later said the five men were British citizens from London, not recent arrivals through the Channel, which refuted earlier speculation. Still, because the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had called places like Fairford legitimate targets and police have not ruled out a foreign link, Washington has been more open about this possibility than London.

In Britain, bail is not a punishment but lets suspects go home under certain conditions while investigations continue. The men were not named or charged and were released in less than two days, even though police can hold suspected terrorists for up to 14 days. Reports said no usable explosives were found. The reason for the quick release is unclear, as is the lack of a public witness interview. The official explanations do not match.

Daniel Thomas, also known as Danny Tommo, has been charged with damaging a migrant boat and has been denied bail, so he remains in custody. Although his case is criminal and not related to terrorism, the contrast is clear: a protester is in jail while the Fairford five, held under terrorism laws after a major incident, are free on bail. Trump would not have released them, but Britain did.

The UK government sees Channel crossings as both a humanitarian and criminal issue and says speculation about Fairford is unhelpful. Critics argue this situation allows hostile individuals in and shows double standards in justice. The five men at Fairford are not migrant boat passengers. Iran’s threat to the bases and the unresolved case remain. The witness is still waiting to be contacted. Tommo is in jail, while the suspected terrorists have been released. The United States and United Kingdom continue to give different versions of what happened.

The story dominated UK media for over 24 hours, with rolling coverage and urgent updates across all channels. The arrests at Fairford were treated as a potential major breach of national security, and speculation about foreign involvement ran high. But as quickly as the news broke, it faded: all five suspects were released on bail, and official details remained sparse.

For many people in Britain and America, the outcome feels strange and unresolved. While UK authorities urge caution and emphasize due process, US officials have voiced open frustration over the rapid release and the lack of clear answers. The UK government seems to offer platitudes while the US is calling for action. Some in Washington now question whether this episode will strain intelligence-sharing and security cooperation between the two countries. If the US believes there was a real security threat and the UK appears to downplay it, trust could be tested.

The main priority should be stopping foreign-directed violence from reaching a US bomber base, but there are still gaps: the witness has been overlooked, bail was short, and official accounts differ. Until more facts are known, the official story is less convincing than the events themselves. Something does not add up.

The post RAF Fairford Does Not Add Up: U.K. Bails Terror Suspects as Trump Says He Would Not appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A Staten Island judge on Tuesday dealt a major blow to Communist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and ordered New York City to scrap the rollout of the new pied-à-terre tax, which hits New Yorkers who own a valuable second home.

Over the summer, Mamdani implemented a so-called luxury property tax on second homes valued at $5 million or more. The property tax also affected certain co-ops valued over $1 million.

Mamdani doxxed the homeowners after his Department of Finance published a database listing the names and addresses of the 960,000 properties.

“As per State law, a property roll was released for public inspection. From this list, DOF will identify properties that may be subject to the new non-primary residence property surcharge,” a Mamdani spox previously told Fox News.

Affluent homeowners said the database and doxxing could lead to harassment and violence.

Homeowners previously filed a lawsuit in New York’s Supreme Court to stop Mamdani’s property tax.

The lawsuit argues that New York City bungled the execution of the new tax by “arbitrarily and capriciously” forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to prove they do not owe the tax.

Last month Staten Island Supreme Court Judge Wayne Ozzi temporarily blocked Mamdani’s property tax as the lawsuit makes it way through the legal system.

New York City appealed and halted the judge’s restraining order.

On Tuesday, Judge Ozzi ordered NYC to scrap the rollout of the tax.

The city is expected to seek a stay of the judge’s decision, The New York Times reported.

The New York Times reported:

A Staten Island judge on Tuesday dealt a major setback to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to raise taxes on the wealthy, saying that the city had mishandled the rollout of a tax on high-end second homes and must start over.

The judge, Wayne M. Ozzi of State Supreme Court on Staten Island, sided with a group of homeowners who had sued the city. The homeowners had argued that the Mamdani administration did not try hard enough to determine who should owe the tax before moving toward collecting it.

“Homeowners are being substantially harmed and penalized needlessly” by the city’s “method of implementing the tax law,” Justice Ozzi wrote.

The lawsuit did not challenge the legality of the tax on second homes, also known as pieds-à-terre. Unveiled by Gov. Kathy Hochul in the spring and backed by the mayor, the tax was popular among voters and hailed by Mr. Mamdani’s supporters as a way to make good on his pledge to “tax the rich.” It was expected to close a budget gap by raising some $500 million annually to fund city services.

The post JUST IN: In Major Blow to Mamdani, Judge Orders NYC to Scrap Rollout of Pied-à-Terre Tax After Homeowners File Lawsuit appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.