International arms smuggler Monzer al-Kassar was sentenced to 30 years in prison for conspiring to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to Colombia’s FARC guerillas.
A prominent Kurdish lawmaker gave a speech in his native Kurdish in Turkey’s Parliament—in defiance of the law. Turkey’s state TV network cut off the live broadcast of the official, Ahmet Turk.
Having already barred pro-independence parties from the Basque Country’s regional elections, Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón went further and banned all their activities, closing their offices and websites.
Colombian President Álvaro Uribe clashed with the country’s Prosecutor General over the head of state’s proposal to re-criminalize possession of personal quantities of drugs.
French president Nicholas Sarkozy met in Paris with elected officials from Guadeloupe after the general strike in the French overseas department turned violent, with one union leader shot dead at a roadblock.
Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council barred Lavalas candidates from the upcoming senate race, insisting it needs official confirmation from the party’s leader, exiled ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
A US federal judge placed 30,299 Haitians under final deportation orders, lifting a suspension of deportations instated in September, after four tropical storms ravaged Haiti in one month.
A Colombian refugee living in Panama was killed in Darién province, a jungle region bordering Colombia that has experienced incursions in the past by Colombian armed groups.
In a communiqué, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) took responsibility for the killing of eight people at Río Bravo in the southwestern department of Nariño.
Some 150 greeted the brothers Antonio and Héctor Cerezo Contreras as they left a prison in Mexico’s Morelos state, after eight years detainment on suspicion of ties to the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR).
Some 500,000 Mexican bus and truck drivers and owners held a one-day strike Feb. 16, slowing freight deliveries and forcing many passengers to find alternative transportation in 17 of the country’s states.
Gunmen fired on the motorcade of José Reyes Baeza Terrazas, governor of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, as it stopped at an intersection in the state capital, killing a bodyguard.
