Appearing before a House of Commons committee in Ottawa Nov. 18, Richard Colvin, a former senior diplomat with Canada's mission in Afghanistan, blasted his country's detainee policies, testifying that all detainees transferred by Canadians to Afghan prisons were likely tortured—and that many of them were innocent.

Britain's Ministry of Defense says it is launching an independent inquiry into allegations that soldiers tortured and killed Iraqi prisoners. The inquiry comes as a result of criticism by the High Court over an earlier investigation by the Royal Military Police that found allegations of abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners to be groundless.

The Argentine Senate on Nov. 19 voted 57-1 to approve a law that would authorize the government to obtain DNA samples from individuals suspected to have been born to forced disappearance victims of the 1976-1983 "Dirty War." The law will amend Article 218 of the Criminal Penal Code to allow minimal biological samples to be taken from a person to determine identity, authorizing judges to issue warrants to obtain samples using the least coercive methods necessary. Controversy around the law stemmed from issues of consent and right to privacy, as well as an individual's right to refuse knowledge of their biological parents.

A gang in a jungle area of Peru's Huánuco region has been killing people to harvest their fat for sale on an international black market, police charged Nov. 19. Medical experts express skepticism at the authorities' claim that the fat is extracted for use in cosmetics by companies in Europe. But Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of the National Police Kidnapping Division, said three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, and two were arrested carrying bottles of liquid fat. At least five other suspects, including two Italian nationals, remain at large, authorities said. Police said the gang could be behind the disappearances of up to 60 people in Huánuco and Pasco regions.

The governments of Colombia and Venezuela traded angry words again on Nov. 19 following the bombing of two footbridges connecting the two countries by Venezuelan guardsmen. The bridges were at the border town of Rangonvalia, where Venezuela's Táchira state meet Colombia's Norte de Santander department. In a statement, Colombia's Foreign Ministry announced it will denounce the destruction of the bridges before the United Nations and the Organization of American States, charging in a statement that "this is a unilateral act of aggression against the civilian population and the border communities."

The CIA built one of its secret prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former US intelligence official (both anonymous) told ABC News this week. Documents provided by Lithuanian officials showed a now-defunct CIA front company, Elite LLC, bought the property from a family and built the "black site" in 2004, the report said.

The UK's High Court ruled Nov. 19 that documents on the detention of Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan in 2002 must be released. This most recent decision is the latest in a series of back-and-forth rulings on whether redacted materials regarding Mohamed's detention should be disclosed. An October interim ruling by Lord Justice Thomas and Justice Lloyd Jones resulted in a redacted release, which the High Court indicated it would revisit after receiving submissions from both the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Mohamed.

Iran's judicial authorities plan to investigate the death of a young doctor who had testified before parliament about prisoner abuses in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election. Dissident websites said that Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani, 26, was killed in order to silence him, as he was the only independent witness to be able to corroborate the charges of torture.