A Guatemalan judge sentenced two former national police officers to 40 years in prison Oct. 28 over the February 1984 disappearance of union leader 27-year-old Fernándo García, the first case to use evidence discovered in abandoned police archives. García, an organizer at the Cavisa maquiladora, was on his way to work when he was shot, taken to a police hospital and never seen again. Evidence in the archive, found covered in bat droppings in a rat-infested former munitions dump in Guatemala City in 2005, implicated police officers Hector Ramírez and Abraham Gómez. "Everything indicates that the accused were definitely in the place where Fernando Garcia was detained," Judge Odilia González said at the hearing.

A suicide bomber struck Istanbul's Taksim Square the morning of Oct. 31, injuring at least 32 in the city's busiest node. The apparent targets were police officers at a substation at the square's north end. At least 15 of those injured were police. The attack came on the last day of the unilateral ceasefire declared by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The so-called "no-action period" had been extended for one month on Sept. 30. (LAT, EÖ/VK, Oct. 31)

From Human Rights Watch, Oct. 28:

Roma and related minority groups deported from Western Europe to Kosovo face discrimination and severe deprivation amounting to human rights abuse, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

An anti-terrorism forum held this week in Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital, called for a "national charter" to face the threat of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and for "dialogue with the extremists" who are willing to surrender. It also recommended "creation of a center that would teach the culture of moderation" and a social policy to "dry up the sources of terrorism and extremism by fighting ignorance, poverty and exclusion." However, Defense Minister Hamadi Ould Hamadi ended the forum with a shout of: "We will never negotiate with those who bear arms against their country, we will respond to them with weapons!"

Police in the Mexican Gulf Coast city of Villahermosa rescued at least 23 Honduran undocumented immigrants, including six children, who were kidnapped for ransom, the Tabasco state prosecutor's office said Oct. 28. Two Mexico citizens were also arrested and charged in the kidnapping. The migrants were reportedly intercepted in the town of Palenque in in neighboring Chiapas state, near the Guatemalan border. At the time of their abduction, the hostages were forced to hand over information about their relatives in Honduras so that they can be forced to deliver ransom money, authorities said. (AFP, Oct. 28)

In Mexico's third mass shooting in less than a week, gunmen who arrived in SUVs opened fire Oct. 27 at a carwash in Tepic, capital of the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, killing at least 15. All but two of the victims worked at the carwash, and most were clients of the same drug treatment center, Alcance Victoria (Victory Outreach). Three victims wore matching T-shirts emblazoned with "Fe y Esperanza," or "Faith and Hope." (LAT, Oct. 28)

A 14-year-old boy was killed Oct. 24 when Moroccan security forces intervened in a protest encampment established by indigenous Sahrawi residents about 14 kilometers outside Laayoune, capital of the occupied territory of Western Sahara. Tens of thousands of Sahrawis have erected tents to protest the social policy of Morocco in the territory, and to demand their right to employment, housing and a decent living. (Magharebia, Oct. 25)

In New York's "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy, xenophobes are ironically protesting construction of a Sufi community center—even as Sufi mosques and shrines are getting blown up regularly in Pakistan by the same political forces that were behind 9-11. Imam Rauf of the planned center (the Cordoba Institute), meanwhile, is being paid by the State Department to go on good-will tours of the Islamic world.