Abdelhakim Belhaj, recently appointed to Tripoli’s rebel military council, was a founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an anti-Qaddafi cell designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called for a federal investigation and Senate hearings into an Associated Press report asserting that the CIA helped the New York Police Department in spying on the city’s Musilm communities.
Authorities in China’s Sichuan province have charged three Tibetan monks with murder over the death of a fellow monk who set himself on fire in an apparent protest action. The local Ngaba Kirti monastery remains under siege by security forces.
Some 300 militants crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan’s territory and stormed seven security checkpoints along the Durand Line, leaving several troops dead. Suicide attacks and NATO air-strikes in Afghanistan meanwhile killed several civilians.
Ali Tarhuni, oil minister of Libya’s Transitional National Council, has assumed executive powers in Tripoli. But the African Union, in an emergency summit at Addis Ababa, refused to recognize the TNC as the legitimate government.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has claimed responsibility for three suicide attacks in Algeria this summer—most recently at military barracks in the coastal town of Cherchel, leaving 18 dead.
Ibrahim ag-Bahanga, the most intransigent of Mali’s Tuareg rebel leaders, died in a mysterious accident in his remote Saharan homeland. Locas say he was involved in a dispute with fellow traffickers who were moving weapons to the Libyan rebels.
Peru’s Congress unanimously approved a new law that guarantees indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent to any projects affecting them and their lands. President Ollanta Humala has 15 days to sign the bill into law.
Mexican President Felipe Calderón said “terrorists” carried out the arson attack on Monterrey’s Casino Royale, which left 52 dead. The number of illegal gambling houses has swelled in Mexico as the cartels turn to them for money laundering.
El Salvador’s Supreme Court blocked the extradition of nine high-ranking military officers accused of overseeing the 1989 “Jesuit Massacre,” defying Interpol “red notices” for the suspects that had been issued at the request of Spanish authorities.
Turkish warplanes continue to bomb supposed Kurdish rebel strongholds in northern Iraq—despite a formal diplomatic protest by Baghdad. Meanwhile, Baghdad denied reports that missiles were fired from southern Iraq at a port in Kuwait.
After Boko Haram’s deadly car bomb attack on the UN compound in Abuja, police immediately responded by deploying bulldozers around the city to demolish all “illegal” structures, with the aim of securing better control of the city.
