The US has transfered four detainees from Guantánamo Bay to three European countries: Italy, France and Hungary. Two of the former detainees will stand trial in Italy.
Former US soldier Steven Green challenged the law used to convict him in civilian court for his role in the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her family in Mahmudiya.
Opposition Afghan member of parliament Malalai Joya warns, “If Barack Obama heralds an escalation of the war, he will betray his own message of hope and deepen my people’s pain.”
Honduran de facto authorities announced that Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa of the right-wing National Party had won the presidency—but resistance leaders claim 70% abstentionism.
Thousands of campesinos blocked highways in Guatemala to press demands for new allocations to the National Lands Fund for renting farmland to be used by more than 100,000 families.
Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council rejected 16 of the 69 parties that submitted candidates for upcoming legislative elections—including the Lavalas Family of ex-president Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Thousands of Uruguayans took to the streets to celebrate the victory of José “Pepe” Mujica, a former leader of the Tupamaro urban guerilla group, in a runoff election for the presidency.
Coptic Christian shop owners in the Egyptian town of Farshoot are refusing to reopen their stores until the government compensates them for damages in two days of rioting over the weekend.
Swiss voters approved a ban on minarets at the urging of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party. Switzerland’s 400,000 Muslims include many Bosnian and Kosovar refugees from ex-Yugoslavia.
An attacker on a motorcycle shot and killed indigenous leader and anti-mining activist Mariano Abarca outside his home in Chicomuselo, in the mountains of southern Mexico’s Chiapas state.
The US Supreme Court vacated a Second Circuit decision that required the Pentagon to release photos of abused detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
An Algerian court sentenced in absentia Guantánamo detainee Ahmed Belbacha to 20 years in prison. Belbacha says he fears torture in Algeria and has requested asylum in the US.
