A judge in Medellín acquitted ten soldiers, including a colonel and major, of participation in the massacre of eight civilians at the “peace community” of San José de Apartadó in February 2005.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement calling on governments to work to come into compliance with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Taliban should be prosecuted for war crimes, Amnesty International said, following the release of a UN report showing a rise in targeted killings of civilians by insurgents in Afghanistan.
Sudanese Guantánamo Bay detainee Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi reached a plea agreement with the US government setting out the maximum sentence he can receive at his military tribunal.
A total of 33 candidates met the deadline for filing to run for president in Haiti’s November elections. But critics assert that real power lies with Bill Clinton, who “reigns as lord and master over Haiti.”
Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) upheld a law enacted in the Federal District (DF, or Mexico City) last December recognizing same-sex marriages.
Local police detained a national Honduran campesino leader, Juan Ramón Chinchilla, in the western department of Copán and held him almost 21 hours without offering a legal justification.
A court in the Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui state has handed down prison sentences to 15 police agents for the January 2009 shooting deaths of two unionists at a Mitsubishi Motors Corp plant.
An Iranian court sentenced seven Baha’i leaders to 20-year prison terms on charges of espionage, propaganda activities against the Islamic order, and cooperation with Israel.
Iranian political prisoners have an issued an appeal for support of the demands of 17 hunger strikers at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, who have refused food for the past two weeks.
Personnel of the Israel Lands Administration, backed up by a large police contingent, demolished the homes of some 300 residents in the “unrecognized” Bedouin village of al-Arakib in the Negev.
The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced that they have temporarily halted their campaign against ISIS after they were bombarded for the second time in four days by Turkish forces. With Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an promising to "wipe out" the Kurdish YPG militia, calling them "terrorists," his forces in northern Syria attacked YPG positions east of the Euphrates River. The YPG, or People's Protection Units, constitute the central pillar of the US-backed SDF, which Washington continues to support with some 2,000 embedded troops. At least 10 YPG fighters were reported killed in the Turkish shelling of territory in the Kurdish autonomous canton of Kobani. The SDF said in a statement: "Turkish attacks in the north and ISIS attacks in the south against our troops had forced us to stop our current operation temporarily against ISIS in its last pocket… We call upon the international community to condemn the Turkish provocations." The statement claimed that YPG fighters responded to the shelling with artillery and machine-gun fire, destroying a Turkish military vehicle and border post. (Image of SDF fighters via Rudaw)
