The Washington Post reports Sept. 29 that a group of Turkish women's rights activists confronted Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes with harsh criticisms of the US-led invasion of Iraq, turning a session designed to highlight the empowering of women into a raw display of the anger at Washington's policy in the region.

A defendant in the ongoing trial of the alleged organizers of the May violence in Andijon, Uzbekistan, testified Sept. 26 that the US Embassy in Tashkent might have financed it, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Uzbek Service reported. Tavakkal Hojiev told the court that he heard from Qobil Parpiev, who has been identified by Uzbek authorities as one of the masterminds behind the violence, that the US Embassy provided funds for the uprising in Andijon. Queried by a lawyer for additional details, Hojiev said: "A big sum went for weapons and cars.

From the Sept. 27 NY Times, reprinted in the International Herald Tribune:

A Spanish court on Monday convicted a Syrian man of conspiring to commit the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and found 17 other men guilty of belonging to or aiding a Spanish cell of Al Qaeda under his command.

Controversy is raging in Paraguay, where the U.S. military is conducting secretive operations. 500 U.S. troops arrived in the country on July 1st with planes, weapons and ammunition. Eyewitness reports prove that an airbase exists in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, which is 200 kilometers from the border with Bolivia and may be utilized by the U.S. military. Officials in Paraguay claim the military operations are routine humanitarian efforts and deny that any plans are underway for a U.S. base. Yet human rights groups in the area are deeply worried.

On Sept. 15 a state judge in Zihuatanejo in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero ordered the release of Felipe Arreaga Sanchez, a leader in the campesino environmental movement who had been held in prison since November 2004. Judge Ricardo Salinas Sandoval ruled that there was insufficient evidence for the state's charge that Arreaga was involved in the 1998 killing of Abel Bautista, son of timber boss Bernardino Bautista Valle. Arreaga left the prison in Zihuatanejo a half hour after the ruling. The state had five days to appeal the decision.

In a new two-part communique published in the newsweekly Proceso, southern Mexico's mysterious Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), both admits to errors and reproaches the rival Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). The communique, "A little more about the history of the EPR," charges that the group repeatedly sought to participate in the Zapatistas' national strategy meetings, but were always rejected and branded as "ultras" (extremists).

Some 1,600 immigrants who say they were abused at the Elizabeth detention center in New Jersey between August 1994 and June 1995 have won a $2.5 million settlement from the private prison company which operated the facility. The suit was brought in March 1996 against Esmor Correctional Services of Melville, NY; the company is now based in Florida and is called Correctional Services Corp. In settling the class action suit, Brown v. Esmor, the company acknowledged no wrongdoing. After legal fees are paid, some 1,600 detainees--many of whom have since been deported--will divide about $1.5 million, with plaintiffs' awards based on how long they were held and what abuses they suffered. Attorneys for the two sides signed off on the settlement on May 19 of this year; Dickinson R. Debevoise, US District Judge in Newark, approved it on Aug. 10.

From the UK Guardian, Sept. 21:

Western aid groups and journalists, including the BBC, helped Islamists in a bid to overthrow the Uzbek government, prosecutors claimed yesterday at the start of a trial of 15 men accused of organising May's uprising in Andijan.