One of Colombia's most feared paramilitary commanders was extradited to the US March 5—over the protests of local human rights groups concerned that details of atrocities and government collusion with paras may never be revealed. US Drug Enforcement Administration officials escorted Hebert Veloza Garcia AKA "HH" onto a plane headed for New York, where he faces drug-trafficking charges.

Environmental and energy groups across New York state are calling on Gov. David Paterson to back away from promises he made to power producers to rewrite the state's role in nation's first plan to cut global warming pollution, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). According to a March 6 story in the New York Times, the governor made a deal with the Independent Power Producers of New York (IPPNY) last fall to re-open the regulations after the group failed to pressure the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to weaken the RGGI rules.

Five people were arrested March 5 as they blocked an access road to protest blasting near a dam on the Edwight "mountaintop removal" coal mining site operated by Massey Energy in West Virginia. It was the latest in a wave of protest actions against mining operations that blast off the tops of Appalachian mountains and dump the rock waste into valley streams below.

The US Supreme Court March 6 granted a motion by the government to dismiss as moot an appeal challenging the indefinite detention of suspected al-Qaeda operative Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. The Court had agreed in December to hear al-Marri's appeal of a ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upholding his detention. Acting Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler presented a motion to the Court, asking it to dismiss the appeal as moot in light of the administration's decision last week to try al-Marri in US federal court. Al-Marri was indicted last week on two charges of providing material support to al-Qaeda and conspiring with others to provide material support to al-Qaeda.

Afghanistan's human rights progress has been thwarted by armed conflict, censorship, abuse of power, and violence against women, according to a report delivered March 5 to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. The report notes that violence against women such as rape, "honor killings," forced marriage, and slavery remain widespread. "Violence is tolerated or condoned within the family and community, within traditional and religious leadership circles as well as the formal and informal justice system," said Pillay. "In this regard the Afghan Government has failed to adequately protect the rights of women despite constitutional guarantees."

Facing a trial at The Hague that could send him to prison for life, former Serbian intelligence chief Jovica Stanisic has called in a favor from his CIA allies. In an exceedingly rare move, the CIA has submitted a classified document to the court that lists Stanisic's collaboration with the US spy agency's intelligence activities in the ex-Yugoslavia. Stanisic's former CIA handler William Lofgren, now retired, said the agency drafted the document to show "that this allegedly evil person did a whole lot of good." Lofgren doesn't claim to disprove the charges against Stanisic. "But setting the indictment aside, there are things this man did that helped bring hostilities to an end and establish peace in Bosnia."

Leon Panetta, in his first press interview as CIA director, told reporters at Langley Feb. 25 that President Barack Obama will continue the global war on terrorism. "We are going to continue to pursue, we are going to continue to bring pressure, we are going to continue a very aggressive effort to go after terrorists, to go after [Osama] bin Laden, until we bring them to justice," Panetta said. "That is a fundamental mission that we are committed to here." (Reuters, Feb. 25)

The CIA has destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations of "terror" suspects, far more than previously acknowledged, government lawyers said March 2 in a letter filed as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations," said the ACLU's Amrit Singh.