A Rwandan court rejected a lawsuit brought by captured Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) rebel leader Laurent Nkunda seeking his release from Rwandan custody. Nkunda was apprehended by Rwandan authorities in January near the DRC border after a joint DRC-Rwandan military operation to capture him and root out Rwandan Hutu rebels operating in the DRC. He is the leader of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a rebel group operating in the eastern DRC province of Nord-Kivu. According to Nkunda's lawyer, he is being held illegallywithout charges or access to counsel. Nkunda faces an uncertain legal future, with the DRC government having called on Rwanda to extradite him to face charges for atrocities committed by forces under his command.

Shortly after the Pakistani Taliban won their demand for Islamic law in the Swat Valley in a peace-for-sharia deal, they moved into neighboring Buner district, and won the right to preach in mosques there—which, local reports indicate, means effective political control. Residents in Buner initially fought the incoming Taliban, forming a lashkar or tribal militia. Some 20 militants were killed in the battle, but the lashkar was soon outnumbered as hundreds more Taliban fighters swarmed into the area.

At least seven were killed and 15 wounded in southern Somalia after Shabaab insurgents attacked a clan militia base in the outskirts of Kismayo. The fighting erupted late April 20 and continued into the following morning, in a town called Bulo Haji, some 90 kilometers southwest of Kismayo, a strategic port city and the capital of Lower Jubba region.

Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) suspended voting for senators on April 19 in the Central Plateau department after violence disrupted the process there in at least three cities. A candidate and his supporters occupied a polling place in Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border. Armed men in five vehicles disrupted voting at two polling place in downtown Mirebalais, and an election worker received a bullet wound early in the day. Local electoral authorities suspended voting in Saut d'eau after people threw rocks at a voting center and charged into others.

Six striking doctors were lightly injured on April 15 when Dominican police suppressed a peaceful march by doctors and nurses near the Darío Contreras hospital in eastern Santo Domingo. Police agents hurled tear-gas grenades at the protesters and attacked them with nightsticks. Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) president Waldo Ariel Suero said the agents also used pistols. The injuries weren't serious, he added, but "the consequences could have been greater." The commander of the police operation, Ventura Hilario, said he tried to stop the march because the medical workers didn't have a permit and because they were blocking traffic.

On the morning of April 16 at least 200 indigenous Yashínanka and Yines occupied the airport in Atalaya, capital of Atalaya province, Ucayali region, in Peru's Amazonian area. The Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (AIDESEP) had been leading a strike since April 13 (or earlier, according to one source) around demands for the repair of environmental damage and for an end to illegal cutting and to the granting of land for mining and oil drilling without consultation with the local communities. The protesters also demanded that the government drop the proposed Law 840/2006, known as the "Law of the Forest," which would increase private investment in the development of state-owned forests.

The US Supreme Court April 20 heard oral arguments in Iraq v. Beaty and Iraq v. Simon, two cases that will determine whether Iraq has sovereign immunity from the jurisdiction of US courts in cases involving misdeeds that occurred during the Saddam Hussein regime. The plaintiffs in both cases sued the Iraqi government, alleging that they were detained and tortured during the 1990s Gulf War.

President Barack Obama, making his first trip to CIA headquarters April 20, acknowledged that agency officials had expressed what he called "understandable anxiety and concern" about his decision to release confidential memos detailing brutal interrogation techniques used by agency operatives. Obama said it was time to admit "mistakes" and "move forward." Among other things, the memos revealed that two captured al-Qaeda operatives—Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—were subjected to waterboarding a total of 266 times.