Prosecutor Javier Zaragoza, in closing arguments against 27 of the 29 accused in Madrid 3-11 attacks, took time to criticize what he called the "parallel process based on unfounded suspicions" of involvement by the Basque separatist group ETA. In his remarks, he even called for criminal charges for contempt of court against Agustín Díaz de Mera, Director General of Police at the time of the attack and a top promoter of the ETA theory. (Typically Spanish, June 12)

In a "mega-march" extending more than 10 kilometers, thousands of teachers from the Section 22 union and their supporters in the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) marched through southern Mexico's Oaxaca City June 14 to mark the first anniversary of the clash between police and striking teachers that sparked months of political unrest.

Former US ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke has an essay in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, "Defying Orders, Saving Lives: Heroic Diplomats of the Holocaust," which draws an unsettlingly valid analogy to contemporary Iraq. Holbrooke outlines the cases of Sweden's Raoul Wallenberg, Portugal's Aristedes de Sousa Mendes and the USA's Hiram Bingham IV, who all risked their careers and even their lives to help Jews escape Axis Europe in defiance of their own governments' policies. Holbrooke notes that asylum policies are similarly restrictive today, even as Iraq approaches a genocidal situation—and asks where such heroes as Wallenberg are in the face of Iraq's refugee crisis:

One Abdur Raziq contributes June 9 a brief account to the open-posting website Ground Report ("Where You Make the News") of the Taliban crackdown on elements of traditional Pashtun culture which are considered "un-Islamic" in Pakistan's Tribal Areas—Lakhtai dancing boys and "eunuchs." These latter are not necessarily literally castrated, but what we call "trans-gendered" in the West. However, an entry in the Things Asian website informs us that a real eunuch caste known as the hijras survives in India. We have noted before Taliban intolerance of the region's indigenous gay culture and music.

New details are emerging surrounding the 208 arrests at the June 10 Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan. According to the New York Times June 13, the police still claim that people were arrested for "specific illegal behavior," like blocking traffic, and not because they were wearing colors of the Latin Kings gang. However, the Times found:

Two minarets at Shia Islam's revered Golden Mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra were blown up June 13. The government has imposed a total curfew on the city until further notice. Shi'ite officials blamed al-Qaeda for the attack, but Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, has called for restraint. "He condemns the attack and urges calm and not to do acts of reprisal against Sunnis," Sistani's spokesman, Hamed Khafaf, told Reuters.

Erick Sosa Villavicencio, a leader of the protest movement in Oaxaca, was freed at dawn on June 9 from the Federal Center of Social Readaption in the Mexican border city of Matamoros. The brother of Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, director of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), Erick was arrested last Nov. 28 and charged with "illegal deprivation of liberty." He was freed for lack of evidence. However, charges of violent robbery were not formally dropped, and he could still be detained again if authorities choose to reactivate the case against him. Insisting all the charges against him were "fabricated," Sosa said, "My only crime is being the brother of Flavio Sosa." His two brothers Flavio and Horacio remain at the Federal Center of Social Readaption in Altiplano, México state. (La Jornada, June 10)

Two Colombian soldiers assigned to counter-guerilla operations in the southern part of the country were arrested June 10 for slaying six unarmed civilians, including a child, during a killing spree early the previous day. The soldiers appeared to be drunk when they entered a party held in a school in the town of San Vicente del Caguan and opened fire, killing three, witnesses told reporters. Three more victims, including a nine-year-old boy, were found shot dead near the building, the army said in a statement. San Vicente del Caguan is the site of a former "demilitarized zone" ceded to the FARC guerillas as a condition of peace talks which have now broken down. (Reuters, June 10)