Specialist Jeremy Morlock pleaded guilty March 23 to three counts of murder as part of a plot contrived with fellow soldiers to kill Afghan civilians. At the court-martial, held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., Morlock also pleaded guilty to one count each of assault, conspiracy, obstructing justice and illegal drug use in exchange for a maximum sentence of 24 years in prison. According to the plea-agreement, Morlock agreed to testify against his co-defendants. Four other soldiers in Morlock's unit, the 5th Stryker Brigade, are also charged with the deaths of the three Afghan men, which occurred in the Kandahar province in January, February and May of last year. Morlock told the military judge, Lt.-Col. Kwasi Hawks, that he and his fellow soldiers began plotting the murders of unarmed Afghans in 2009 and killed the three civilians knowing they were unarmed and posed no legitimate threat. Morlock testified that Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, who is also charged, took the lead in developing the plot. Gibbs maintains that the deaths were a result of combat. In January, the Washington Post first reported that Morlock accepted the plea agreement offered by US Army prosecutors. Morlock, charged in June, is the first of the five soldiers to be court-martialed.

As Allied bombardment of Tripoli continued, Libyan rebels advanced on Ajdabiya March 24 in their bid to retake the strategic eastern oil town from troops loyal to Moammar Qaddafi. The rebels, whose weapons range from Kalashnikovs to knives, face cordons of tanks guarding approaches to the city, and the populace is fleeing en masse. In Benghazi, rebel spokesman Ahmed Omar Bani said: "We are trying to negotiate with these people [Qaddafi troops] in Ajdabiya because we are almost sure that they have lost contact with their headquarters. Truthfully some of the Ajdabiya militias have asked to surrender, to be left alone and to go back home. But we cannot leave them to go without interrogation because the answers we get from them will be useful in saving lives." (Middle East Online, March 24)

Mexico-US border police chiefs were at the top of the news in recent weeks. In a bitter twist to an almost fairytale story that captured the imagination of the US and Mexican press, the 20-year-old police chief of a small town in the blood-soaked Juárez Valley, Marisol Valles, fled to the US seeking political asylum in early March.
 Only days later, on March 10, US federal agents swept into the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, arresting Police Chief Angelo Vega along with the town's mayor and other suspects. Jailed in southern New Mexico on gun-running charges, the defendants are accused of engaging in the type of cross-border commerce that has reaped death and destruction in the Juárez Valley and other parts of Mexico during the past few years.

Hours after the government concluded the restitution of some 63,000 acres of usurped lands to Afro-Colombian communities in Chocó department, illegal armed groups raided and burned several acres of crops, Colombia's Caracol Radio reported March 21. The Interior and Justice Minister German Vargas Lleras, along with Agriculture Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo, visited the Chocó towns of Curvarado and Jiguamiando to conclude the legal restoration of lands to Afro-Colombians in the region last week. Hours after their visit, paramilitary armed groups allegedly attacked the area of Curvarado, torching 12.35 acres of corn that had been planted by those who live there.

The UK-based indigenous rights group Survival International on March 17 noted the 100th anniversary of an historic report submitted by Irish investigator Roger Casement finding that 30,000 Amazon Indians were enslaved, tortured, raped and starved in just 12 years during the rubber boom. Casement was sent by the British government to investigate crimes committed by British-registered rubber giant, the Peruvian Amazon Company. He found, "The crimes charged against many men now in the employ of the Peruvian Amazon Company are of the most atrocious kind, including murder, violation, and constant flogging." Agents of the company rounded up dozens of Indian tribes in the western Amazon to collect wild rubber for the European and American markets. In a few short decades many of the tribes were completely wiped out.

A spokesperson for the UK's Metropolitan Police Service last week confirmed the arrest of a 46-year-old Peruvian national on suspicion of crimes against humanity and torture. He is suspected of involvement with the Shining Path, a Maoist guerilla organization, believed to be responsible for the deaths of thousands in two decades of conflict in Peru. The man, whose name has yet to be released, was arrested on March 15 and is being held while police conduct searches of several addresses in the area linked to him. The man is the first to be arrested under the Coroners and Justice Act of 2009, which allows UK courts to hear cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by nonresidents between 1991 and 2001.

With global eyes fixed on the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, the Obama administration last week signed an accord with Chile to help the South American country develop a nuclear energy program. The accord focuses on training nuclear engineers, calling for cooperation in the areas of “operation and utilization of nuclear research reactors,” safety, radioactive waste management and scientific exchange. Chile’s Foreign Minister Alfredo Moreno and US Ambassador Alejandro Wolff signed the accord March 14 days ahead of President Obama’s one-day visit to Chile.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster has not caused the Obama administration to rethink its commitment to "clean nuclear power." Obama’s 2012 budget calls for an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants. "The administration’s energy priorities are based solely on how best to build a 21st century, clean energy economy," White House spokesman Clark Stevens said in a statement this week. "That policy is not about picking one energy source over another." Even as his administration has ordered a review of all US reactors, Obama last week called nuclear power an "important part" of his energy agenda.