The Spanish government on May 6 extradited pilot Julio Alberto Poch to Argentina to face trial for his alleged role in the nation's 1976-83 "Dirty War." Poch was a navy officer at Argentina's Naval Mechanics School, one of the most notorious detention centers of the military dictatorship, and is believed to have piloted flights known as "death flights," which were used to dump the military junta's political opponents into the Plata River and the Atlantic Ocean. Poch holds dual Dutch and Argentine citizenship, which had protected him from earlier attempts at extradition, but he was arrested and imprisoned last September when he landed in Valencia while en route to the Netherlands. A Spanish court agreed to his extradition in January, finding that there are adequate measures in place to guarantee that Poch will receive a fair trial in Argentina. Poch continues to deny the charges against him.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on May 5 arrested a South Florida man accused of involvement in Guatemala's December 1982 massacre that left more than 250 dead. Authorities claim that Gilberto Jordan illegally concealed his past military service and involvement in the killings on his US immigration forms. Jordan is accused of being one of 20 Guatemalan special forces soldiers known as "Kaibiles" who killed men, women, and children in the village Dos Erres (Petéñ department) during Guatemala's civil war.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), in a survey of global press-freedom "Predators" released May 3, ranks Eritrea's President Issaias Afeworki as the world's worst abuser of media freedom. RSF charges that Eritrea permits no independent media and the state-run newspapers and television network do not allow stories that challenge the nation's leadership or its policies. The government has described a free press as "incompatible" with Eritrean culture and last year President Isaias said no Eritrean should want or need to attack their own country.

The US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces on May 3 heard arguments in the appeal of Army Spc. Charles Graner, sentenced to 10 years for abuses committed at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Graner, alleged ringleader of the Abu Ghraib abuse, was convicted in 2005 of conspiracy, assault, maltreating prisoners, dereliction of duty, and committing indecent acts. Graner's lawyer argued that the defense was denied access to classified documents that may have shown some of the detainee treatment was actually part of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The government argued that the defense had access to the documents before the trial. A ruling is expected by August.

Cuba's president Raúl Castro led some 800,000 people in the traditional May 1 march to Havana's Plaza de la Revolución. In a brief speech, Salvador Valdés, head of the Cuban Workers' Confederation (CTC), asked workers to support the government's economic plan, which he said "will require extraordinary efforts and sacrifices" but is "vital for preserving our social system." In April President Castro called for a reduction of public spending, the elimination of subsidies and of the black market, a stimulus for agriculture, and layoffs of as many as 1 million workers, about a fifth of the workforce, from their current employment. Castro said the government would seek to create conditions so that everyone would be able to find a productive job. (Prensa Gráfica, El Salvador, May 1 from AFP; La Jornada, Mexico, May 2 from correspondent)

As has become traditional, rival Mexican union confederations celebrated International Workers Day on May 1 with separate rallies in Mexico City's huge Zócalo plaza. The largest was organized by the independent National Workers Union (UNT), which claimed 250,000 to 300,000 participants; the local police failed to give an estimate.

In Panama, thousands of workers marched on May 1 to oppose the neoliberal economic policies of President Ricardo Martinelli's government, which they said was seeking to "take the workers back to the labor conditions of the 19th century." They protested an increase in prices of staple goods, an increase in consumption taxes, government plans for labor "reform," and a law which imposes prison sentences of up to two years for blocking traffic during protests—an effort "to stop the unions and to criminalize social protest," according to Mariano Mena, director of the National Coordinating Committee of Organized Workers.

Thousands of unionized public employees marked International Workers Day on May 1 with marches in Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador, joined by members of socialist president Rafael Correa's PAIS Alliance (AP) party. ("PAIS" is the acronym of "Proud and Sovereign Homeland" in Spanish, and also spells the word for "country.") Unemployment in Ecuador reached 9.1% in the first quarter of 2010, up from 7.9% at the end of 2009, while underemployment among the country's 4.6 million economically active workers is officially at 51.3%.