Yemen’s embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh blamed the rising tide of Arab revolution on Israeli subversion, while Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi blamed it on al-Qaeda. Life’s little ironies.
Libyan rebels drove Qaddafi’s forces from the key eastern oil port of Brega, as two US warships entered the Mediterranean, bound for Libya on an officially “humanitarian” mission.
Veteran Tuareg guerilla fighters who Qaddafi backed in Mali and Niger are now said to be serving as mercenaries for his regime—while indigenous Tuareg tribes in Libya have joined the revolution.
Iranian opposition websites say more than 200 people were arrested while attempting to protest in Tehran, with another 40 detained in Isfahan.
UN Special Representative to Iraq Ad Melkert issued a statement expressing concern about reports of human rights violations during the nationwide protest campaign now underway.
Although the regime has effectively suppressed press accounts, dissident websites in Syria say security forces have dispersed three demonstrations in the past few weeks.
In vivid contrast to Lara Logan’s sexual abuse in Cairo, the mob slaying of a young Palestinian man in Jerusalem in an anti-Arab frenzy has been subject to an effective blackout.
Israeli prosecutors are preparing a $275,000 lawsuit against Bedouin families for the cost of removing them from government land they tried to take over northwest of Beersheba.
A special court in India sentenced 11 Muslims to death in connection with the Godhra train burning in 2002 that killed 59 Hindu nationalists and started the 2002 Gujarat riots.
An Argentine court commenced the trial of former dictators Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone for overseeing the theft of babies born to political prisoners during the “Dirty War.”
Some 17 Haitian groups have launched a new campaign against the neoliberal economic policies that Haiti has followed under successive governments over the last three decades.
The American Civil Liberties Union has declared the civil and human rights situation in Puerto Rico a “high priority for the organization,” citing “repression against the student movement.”
