The death sentence of Afghan journalism student Sayad Parwaz Kambaksh was reduced Oct. 21 to 20 years imprisonment by an Afghan appeals court. Kambaksh was sentenced to death in January for distributing papers questioning gender roles under Islam. In May, Kambaksh appealed his death sentence before the appeals court. He denied the accusations in front of a three-judge panel Oct. 19, saying they were made by Balkh University professors and students with "private hostilities" against him. He told the court that his confessions were the result of torture by the Balkh province intelligence service.

The US Department of Defense announced Oct. 23 that it has filed new war crimes charges against two Kuwaiti men held at Guantánamo Bay. Fouad Rabia, a US-educated aeronautical engineer suspected of running a supply depot at Tora Bora, and Fayiz Kandari, an alleged adviser to Osama bin Laden, were charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terror. The two men, who have spent over seven years in Guantánamo, are said to have the longest-running unlawful detention lawsuits pending in the US District Court in Washington. Rabia and Kandari now face a maximum of life in prison.

High-profile Croatian journalist Ivo Pukanic, publisher of the muckraking opposition weekly Nacional, was killed along with his marketing chief Niko Franjic in a bomb blast in central Zagreb Oct. 23. The bomb reportedly exploded under his car and was detonated by remote control. Pukanic was noted for his aggressive investigations of official corruption and human rights abuses.

Maria del Pilar Hurtado, director of Colombia's DAS intelligence agency, resigned Oct. 23 following revelations her secret police had been spying on opposition Sen. Gustavo Petro, as part of a probe of his Polo Democrático party's supposed links to the FARC guerillas. President Álvaro Uribe accepted the director's resignation. Both Uribe and del Pilar deny the spying was undertaken on direct orders from the president. (Colombia Reports, Oct. 23)

On Oct. 15 the Chilean Supreme Court sentenced the 88-year-old retired general Sergio Arellano Stark to six years in prison for the killing of four people shortly after a Sept. 11, 1973 coup that brought the late dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power. Another retired officer, Carlos Romero Munoz, also received a six-year sentence in the same case; three others were sentenced to four years. The victims—Teofilo Segundo Arce Toloza, Jose Esteban Sepulveda Baeza, Segundo Abelardo Sandoval Gomez and Leopoldo Mauricio Gonzalez Norambuena--were killed at the San Javier military facility on Oct. 2, 1973. (La Jornada, Oct. 16)

The public trial for the Argentine government's clandestine sale of arms to Ecuador and Croatia from 1991 to 1995 in violation of international agreements began in Buenos Aires on Oct. 16. There are 18 defendants; the best known, former president Carlos Menem (1989-1999), now a senator from La Rioja province, failed to attend, claiming health problems. Much of the evidence disappeared in the 1995 explosion of an arms factory; at least six potential witnesses had died by 1998, two in a helicopter crash, three from heart attacks and one in what was ruled a suicide. (La Jornada, Oct. 17)

The main route for people trying to leave Cuba for the US is now through Mexico. According to the US Department of Homeland Security, 11,126 Cubans entered the US this way in 2007, while just 1,055 went directly to Florida. The immigrants usually pay $5,000-$10,000 for a trip in a high-speed fishing boat to Quintana Roo, Mexico, and then travel by land to the Texas border. The operations are generally run by Cuban Americans who have rented or stolen the boats from Florida. (AP, Oct. 19) Mexican police arrested two Cuban American smugglers in June; they reportedly said they were members of the Miami-based rightwing Cuban American National Foundation (CANF).

Twenty-one were killed and 12 injured Oct. 20 in a fight between inmates at a prison in Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, Tex. Tamaulipas state and Mexican federal police, supported by army troops, took control of the state prison, as anxious relatives of inmates gathered outside to demand information—at one point kicking the prison gates. Inmates used guns, knives and gasoline bombs in the battle before security forces stormed the prison. Reports indicated all of the dead were killed in the initial fighting between prisoners, as opposed to in the effort to re-take the facility—but didn't state this explicitly.