The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis entered the Persian Gulf March 27, where it will conduct a joint exercise with the Dwight D. Eisenhower, which has been in the Gulf since October. The air wings of the two carrier groups will conduct a joint exercise while surface ships will hold exercises in anti-submarine, anti-surface ship and mine warfare. The Stennis is escorted by the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam.

From the Center for Constitutional Rights, March 27:

First Military Commission at Guantanamo Deeply Flawed
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) today released a statement on the military commission proceedings at Guantánamo Bay against Australian David Hicks that began yesterday. Hicks pled guilty to material support of a terrorist group last night apparently in exchange for being allowed to serve his sentence in Australia.

Abdul Malik, an al-Qaeda suspect accused of involvement in terrorist attacks in Kenya in 2002 has been handed over to US custody by Kenyan authoirites and transported to Guantanamo Bay due to the "significant threat" he represented, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said Malik has admitted involvement in a hotel bombing and for trying to shoot down an Israeli jetliner with 271 people on board. The attack on Mombassa's Hotel Paradise, a resort popular with Israeli tourists, killed over a dozen people. Malik is the first detainee to be transferred to Guantanamo since September 2006, when 14 al-Qaeda suspects arrived from secret US prisons overseas. Whitman said Malik was held at US military prisons before being taken to Guantanamo, not secret CIA prisons. (AlJazeera, March 27)

Two suicide car bombs exploded near the home of a tribal leader in the Abu Ghraib district west of Baghdad March 27, killing the sheikh's son and several other people. Sheikh Thahir al-Dari, whose home was targeted, is the head of the al-Zobaie tribe and belongs to a group opposed to al-Qaeda. Salam al-Zobaie, Iraq's deputy prime minister who survived an assassination bid last week, belongs to al-Dari's tribe. (AlJazeera, March 27)

More than 18,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan have returned home since the UN High Commissioner foor Refugees (UNHCR) started this year's voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan, officials announced March 23. "They have been given a grace period from March 1 to April 15 to repatriate voluntarily with assistance," UNHCR said, adding that Afghans who did not register during the 15-week period and thus do not have Proof of Registration (PoR) cards, will be considered illegal migrants and will be subject to prosecution. UNHCR says there are still some 2.15 million Afghan citizens in Pakistan. (UNHCR press release, March 23)

South African and foreign intelligence agencies have been monitoring an alleged Islamist militant training camp at Greenbushes, Port Elizabeth, according to local press reports. One magazine has even published a report on the alleged training camp. The report—including photographs of the supposed training grounds—is the cover story in Molotov Cocktail, a magazine edited by James Sanders, author of a recently published history of South Africa‘s intelligence services. However, Port Elizabeth Muslim leader Samuel Panday on Monday dismissed the report, saying the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) was trying to increase its budget allocation through making claims of a military camp. "There is no such camp—it is all nonsense; rubbish," said Panday. (Mail & Guardian, March 27)

Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said March 26 that India intends to go ahead with a multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline from Iran via Pakistan despite objections from the US. "Talks on this pipeline are going on," Mukherjee said in an interview with the NDTV news network. "When I was in Iran, I had categorically mentioned that we are interested in having this pipeline." He added: "Now negotiations are going on about the prices." (AFP, March 26)

A Chinese politician from the predominantly Muslim and ethnic Uighur province of Xinkiang in China's far west has claimed that 18 people killed in a raid on alleged terrorist training camp had links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Shi Dagang said 17 other members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) were arrested during the operation in January. "Their terrorists were trained by the Taliban in Afghanistan and sent to China by them," Shi Dagang said during a news conference at China's annual legislative session in Beijing. He also claimed that more than 1,500 semi-assembled grenades were seized in the raid east of China's border with Kyrgyzstan.