In the ongoing peace talks in Havana, Colombia's government and the FARC rebels agreed June 7 to set up a truth commission that addresses the deaths of thousands of people in five decades of the country's conflict. Both sides pledged to take responsibility for victims, a break with the longtime practice of blaming each other. The FARC also announced a ceasefire from June 9 to 30, to allow the presidential run-off elections to move ahead. The group had previously declared a week-long ceasefire around the period covering the first round of elections on May 25, in which the hardline Oscar Ivan Zuluaga won more votes than other candidates, but fell far short of the 50% needed to avoid a run-off. Zuluaga criticized the truth commission agreement, insisting that the FARC to admit to being the main culprit of the violence of the past generations. "The FARC rebels are the primary victimizers in Colombia, with all the murders and terrorism they have committed in all these years of massacres," he said at a campaign stop in Huila.

Doctors in Israel are refusing to back proposed legislation that would allow Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike to be force-fed. The bill, proposed by the Home Front Defense Ministry, comes as at least 65 of the 290 striking detainees have been hospitalized since they stopped eating on April 24. The legislation would empower judges to sanction force-feeding if a detainee's life is perceived to be in danger. But the Israel Medical Association is urging physicians not to cooperate in the practice. "It goes against the DNA of the doctors to force treatment on a patient," said the IMA's Ziva Miral. "Force-feeding is torture, and we can't have doctors participating in torture."

The Islamabad High Court on June 5 ordered the arrest of former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official Jonathan Banks for his involvement in a 2009 drone strike that killed civilians. Kareem Khan, whose brother and son were killed in the drone strike in Waziristan, had petitioned the court to charge Banks with murder. Banks left Pakistan in 2010 after his identity was revealed and is unlikely to return to Pakistan to face charges. Nevertheless, activists such as the Foundation for Fundamental Rights, which represented Khan, welcomed the ruling and expressed hope that it would set a precedent for additional charges against US officials.

Amnesty International called on Peru's authorities to ensure that all those suspected of criminal responsibility in the Bagua violence are brought to justice, in a statement issued June 5, the fifth anniversary of the incident that left 33 people dead. Demonstrators and police were killed when troops fired on a road blockade launched to protest against a series of laws allowing for the exploitation of natural resources on indigenous lands. During the violence, 23 National Police officers were killed, along with 10 civilians. Hundreds more were injured. So far only protesters have been brought to trial. "If the Peruvian authorities are truly committed to bringing to justice those suspected of criminal responsibility for these deaths, it is not enough to punish the protesters and ignore possible abuses by the police," said Guadalupe Marengo, Amnesty's Americas deputy program director.

The US Department of Defense on June 2 approved the war crimes trial of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi (BBC profile), a leader of al-Qaeda's armed forces between 2002 and 2004. The former CIA captive has been held at Guantánamo Bay since 2007. The official charge sheet (PDF) alleges, among other things, that al-Hadi was a superior commander for al-Qaeda and that he and his operatives killed multiple US service members and attacked a US military medical helicopter with rocket-propelled grenades and firearms. Prosecutors also allege that al-Hadi funded and oversaw all of al-Qaeda's operations against US and allied forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2002 to 2004, and that he directed his forces to use various unlawful means, such as attacking civilians and detonating car bombs in civilian areas.

A May 20 Reuters report picked up by Israel's dialy Ha'artez portrays Lebanon's government as having basically thown in the towel on cannabis eradiction in the Bekaa Valley, apparently afraid of the war spilling across the border from neighboring Syria. Towns in the Bekaa were hit by rocket fire last year, and the valley continues to be shaken by periodic sectarian attacks related to the fighting across the border in Syria. During Lebanon's own 1975-1990 civil war, the fertile Bekaa Valley produced up to 1,000 tons of hashish annually, before production was nearly stamped out under an aggressive eradication program. "From the 1990s until 2012, cannabis eradication took place on an annual basis," Col. Ghassan Shamseddine, head of Lebanon's drug enforcement unit, told Reuters. "But in 2012...it was halted because of the situation on the Lebanese borders and the instability in Syria."