The NYPD April 2 defended its surveillance of political activists before the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC). The NYPD statement admitted "detectives collected information both in-state and out-of-state to learn in advance what was coming our way," but said the intention was to stop terrorists. The New York Times says still-secret NYPD reports show police went undercover sometimes posing as activists themselves, even made friends with protestors. "People are not going to want to go to demonstrate if they know big brother is in there with them, organizing the protest, watching them, whatever it may be," charged Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).

A high-level al-Qaeda suspect who was in CIA custody for more than four years has alleged that his US captors tortured him into making false confessions about terrorist attacks in the Middle East, according to newly released Pentagon transcripts of a March 14 military tribunal hearing at Guantánamo. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who US officials link to the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings and the 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen, told a panel of military officers that he confessed torture. "The detainee states that he was tortured into confession and once he made a confession his captors were happy and they stopped torturing him," Nashiri's representative read to the tribunal. "Also, the detainee states that he made up stories during the torture in order to get it to stop." (AND from WP, March 31)

According to reports in major Dominican dailies on March 30, the Central Electoral Council (JCE) is planning to annul the Dominican birth certificate of human rights activist Sonia Pierre, the head of the Dominican-Haitian Women's Movement (MUDHA). JCE chief inspector Juan Tavarez Gomez and JCE security chief Victor Lantigua reportedly have determined that Pierre's birth certificate was based on false information and is therefore invalid.

According to residents of Puerto Nuevo, in the Ecuadoran province of Sucumbios near the border with Colombia, on March 22 Colombian soldiers fired a grenade at the home of Ecuadoran citizen Jorge Plaza Mantilla in Puerto Nuevo. Fifteen Colombian soldiers then entered Plaza Mantilla's house, seized him and headed back toward Colombian territory. While on the way to the border, the soldiers also captured Colombian citizen Daniel Marroqui Ortega and took him with them into Colombia. Later, the Colombia military turned the two men's dead bodies over to the Colombian Red Cross and Public Defender's Office. The Colombian military claimed the victims were linked to Colombian guerrilla groups, a charge their relatives rejected.

On March 24, Brazilian federal police and environmental agents shut down a major deep-water port on the Amazon River owned by Cargill Inc., saying the US-based multinational agribusiness firm failed to provide an environmental impact statement required by law. Cargill's controversial soy export terminal port is located in the town of Santarem, in Para state. Judge Souza Prudente ordered the port shut down late on March 23. Federal police agent Cesar Dessimoni said Cargill had prepared an environmental assessment that did not meet federal standards. "They'll have to do it correctly, as the law demands," he said. "A big step forward has been taken in enforcing the responsible use of natural resources and bringing greater governance in the Amazon," Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Amazon Campaign Coordinator in Brazil, said in a statement.

At least 475 youths were arrested and about 100 police agents were injured in clashes in Santiago on March 29 when Chilean students, mostly from secondary schools, carried out their annual march for the Day of the Young Combatant. Some of the columns marched peacefully in the center of the city, but others—including anarchists and masked youths carrying Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) banners—clashed with police near the La Moneda palace. The police then blocked the march and used tear-gas grenades and water cannons on the protesters. There were also disturbances outside the capital. Five youths were arrested near Tarapaca University in the northern city of Arica, and violent incidents occurred in the northern city of Copiapo, and at Atacama University, as well as in Valparaiso, Concepcion and Temuco.

The family of independent US journalist Bradley Roland Will traveled to Mexico the week of March 19 to demand an impartial investigation of his death in Oaxaca on Oct. 27. The Oaxaca state attorney general, Rosa Lizbeth Caña Cadeza, has ruled that Will was shot dead by leftist protesters during a demonstration; she has freed two local government officials, Abel Santiago Zarate and Orlando Manuel Aguilar, who were arrested as suspects. The federal Special Prosecutor's Office for Attention to Crimes Committed Against Journalists is now investigating the case, and the Will family was present for a reconstruction of the killing at the scene in Oaxaca. In a press conference in Mexico City on March 23, Howard Will, the journalist's father, called the Oaxaca state investigation "partial and inept." Craig Will, Brad Will's brother, said if the Mexican government didn't satisfy the family's demand for justice, they would take the case to international bodies. (La Jornada, March 24)

The government of center-right Mexican president Felipe Calderon Hinojosa is "seeking a provocation" among indigenous communities in the southeastern state of Chiapas, according to the 17 de Noviembre autonomous municipality, one of the communities supporting the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). With the participation of federal soldiers, indigenous youths are being recruited into paramilitary groups, the community charged in a communique in the middle of March. The government is "organizing groups to attack...[s]o that if there's a confrontation, it will have an opportunity to bring in the army and apply, as it says, a state of law."