According to the online magazine Narco News, the company that taught torture methods to police agents in Leon in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato (see Update, July 6) is Risks Incorporated, a private security firm with offices in Miami and the United Kingdom. One of the two instructors involved in the training may be Risks Incorporated's Andrew "Orlando" Wilson, who served in the British military 1988-93, including 22 months in Northern Ireland. The other instructor appears to be Gerardo "Jerry" Arrechea, a Cuban-Mexican martial arts instructor; he seems to be the same "Jerry Arrechea" that the right-wing Miami-based Comandos F4 organization lists as its Mexican contact. In 2007 Risks Incorporated said its instructors used "psychological torture" in some courses "to show how easy it is to break a hostage and we're being nice!" (Narco News, July 7)

On June 23 Haitian president Rene Preval nominated economist Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis to succeed acting prime minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, who was forced to resign on April 12 following violent protests over the rising cost of food. Preval made two other nominations before naming Pierre-Louis; Parliament rejected both. Pierre-Louis was an official at the National Airport Authority from 1979 to 1982, during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc," 1971-1986), and held a cabinet post in the first administration of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1991.

Some 10,000 Venezuelans protested in Caracas July 12 to demand the country's supreme court overturn a "blacklist"—or "inhabilitación política"—barring several opponents of President Hugo Chávez from running in upcoming state and municipal elections. Chanting "freedom!" and waving Venezuelan flags, the demonstrators marched on the Supreme Justice Tribunal building, where they urged justices to strike down the list.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) July 11 issued eight recommendations to the Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA) concerning grave violations of basic guarantees—including homicide and torture—in anti-crime operations in the states of Sinaloa, Sonora, Michoacán and Tamaulipas.

On June 20, West Palm Beach resident Valery Joseph died while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, Florida. The 23-year-old Haitian immigrant had been living in the US since he was eight, said his mother, Jacqueline Fleury. At a news conference in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood on July 8, the day Joseph would have turned 24, US Rep. Kendrick Meek joined Joseph's family members and immigrant rights advocates in calling for an independent investigation into what Meek called Joseph's "untimely death."

On July 10, US District Judge William Dimitrouleas in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., sentenced former ICE agent Wilfredo Vazquez to 87 months in prison for sexually assaulting a female immigration detainee in his custody. Vazquez pleaded guilty in April to two counts of sexual abuse; he admitted that in September 2007, while transporting the Jamaican detainee to a Broward County holding facility, he first took her to his home and forced her to submit to sex. (See INB, Nov. 26, 2007). The woman's identity has not been revealed; she is identified in court papers as "M.C."

On July 9, ICE agents joined Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in raiding two marine companies in Port Arthur in southeastern Texas, near the Louisiana border. The operations took place at the R & R Marine Fabrication and Drydock facility on Procter Street and at a Cal Dive International facility on Yacht Club Road. The agents arrested 37 immigrant workers at R & R and took them to the ICE holding facility at a private jail in nearby Beaumont; from there the workers were to be transferred to the Houston Detention and Removal Facility. It was not clear whether any workers were arrested at Cal Dive.

The New York Times scored a media coup July 1 with a front-page story on the revival Algeria's Islamist militant underground following its transformation into an al-Qaeda franchise, "Ragtag Insurgency Gains a Lifeline From Al Qaeda." The front-page story featured an interview (carried out by an intermediary using a tape recorder) with Abdelmalek Droukdal, who in 2004 "sent a secret message" to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," resulting in "what one firsthand observer describes as a corporate merger." The fruit of this union was "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb," which has since been wracking up high-profile attacks in Algeria. But many in Algeria are furious at the Times now, deeming the account free advertising for the terror franchise.