Rwandan Hutu militant Desire Munyaneza was convicted by the Superior Court of Quebec May 22 on seven counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes under Canada's new Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Munyaneza is the first person to have been charged under the act, which Canada ratified in 2000 in order to fulfill its obligations to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

More than a dozen Ethiopian military trucks crossed the border into Somalia May 20, setting up a checkpoint at Kalabeyrka, according to the governor of Hiran region, Sheik Abdirahman Ibrahim Macow. Ethiopian forces, which had withdrawn from Somalia in January, returned days after an Islamist militia took over three towns, expanding its control over a large part of the country. (NYT, May 19)

A Libyan militant whose false information about ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was used by the Bush administration as part of its justification for war in Iraq died in a prison in Libya, a newspaper in the North African country reported. The militant, Ali Mohammed Abdel-Aziz al-Fakheri, known by his nom de guerre, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, hanged himself late last week, according to the newspaper, Oea.

The US Department of Justice announced May 21 that Guantánamo Bay detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani will be prosecuted in a US federal court for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The announcement follows the ordered review of all Guantánamo detainees pursuant to plans to close the detention facility.

An Italian judge ruled May 20 that the trial of 26 Americans and seven Italians involving the 2003 abduction of Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr by the CIA will proceed despite excluded evidence. Judge Oscar Magi of the Fourth Chamber of the Court of Milan determined that the case will continue despite a ruling by Italy's Constitutional Court that excluded certain evidence on the grounds of national security.

Italian police arrested 68 accused members of the Camorra, Naples' ruling crime machine, on May 19, in one of the biggest crackdowns on organized crime in recent years. Judges issued 109 arrest warrants for murder, drug trafficking, money laundering and other charges. The warrants were directed mainly at the Amato-Pagano family, part of the breakaway "Scissionisti" clan fighting a family led by Paolo Di Lauro. The police blame the war between the factions for dozens of deaths in recent years. The head of the Amato-Pagano family, Raffaelle Amato, 44, was arrested in Marbella, Spain, on May 17. (AFP, AKI, May 19)

Tens of thousands of Guatemalans have taken to the streets since the May 10 slaying of a prominent lawyer who left behind a videotape saying that if anything happened to him it was at the behest of the country's president. "If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassinated by President Álvaro Colom with help from Gustavo Alejos," the president's private secretary, the lawyer, Rodrigo Rosenberg, said in the video. Rosenberg was shot while riding his bicycle near his home. In the tape, Rosenberg said officials might want to kill him because he represented a businessman who had refused to cooperate in a money-laundering operation sought by President Colom. The businessman, Khalil Musa, was killed with his daughter in April. Colom rejects the accusation, and has called for the FBI and UN-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) to investigate the case.

Colombian security forces arrested 112 suspected members of the powerful Norte del Valle Cartel May 20. The heavily-armed unit belonging to the cartel's paramilitary arm, Los Rastrojos surrendered in an area of Chocó department near the border with Panama. They were surrounded in a Colombian military operation involving army and naval units.