A US Army sergeant was convicted March 30 and sentenced to 35 years in prison for killing four unarmed Iraqi prisoners in 2007. Sgt. First Class Joseph Mayo, formerly of the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry and two other soldiers were charged in September with shooting the four bound and blindfolded prisoners and disposing of their bodies in a canal.

At least 20 people were killed early March 30 as gunmen stormed a Pakistani police training school near Lahore. The attackers remain in control of the complex, and are exchanging fire with security forces. The assailants apparently entered the complex dressed in police uniforms. (AFP, BBC World Service, March 30)

A hostage crisis involving three International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) workers may force agencies to stop bringing assistance to some areas of the Philippines, officials told the UN news agency IRIN. Stephen Anderson, the World Food Programme (WFP) country representative, said additional protection measures for his 60 local and foreign staff were paramount as the situation in Mindanao had become "dramatically more insecure".

Former US State Department lawyer Vijay Padmanabhan criticized the administration of former president George W. Bush for approving extreme interrogation techniques against terrorism suspects, in an interview with the Associated Press March 27. Padmanabhan, who now teaches at Cardozo School of Law in New York, served as the State Department's chief counsel on Guantánamo Bay and Iraq detentions. He said he believes the interrogation tactics used on some detainees constituted torture, and that the Bush administration was wrong to argue that the detainees were not protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called March 29 for the US and Yemen to agree on a repatriation plan that provides "meaningful legal process" for the nearly 100 Yemeni detainees still at Guantánamo Bay. A new HRW report criticized any proposal involving indefinite suspension at a Yemeni facility and expressed fears of detainee mistreatment after repatriation.

Crusading Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón has asked prosecutors to investigate the US lawyers reportedly behind the establishment of the Guantánamo Bay detention center, Spanish media reported Saturday. Garzón's request comes after a criminal complaint was filed last week in the Audiencia Nacional against six lawyers from the administration of former US president George W. Bush, including David Addington, John Yoo, and former attorney general Alberto Gonzales.

A judge in the Southern District of New York March 27 ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to release reports on the destruction of 92 videotapes of terrorism suspect interrogations within the next 30 days or explain why it should not do so. Judge Alvin Hellerstein directed the CIA to disclose the reports along with a list of witnesses as part of the ongoing lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in an effort to access government materials on the interrogations under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In side-by-side front page stories, under the single headline "New Afghan Strategies for the US and Its Foes," the New York Times March 27 tells us "Obama to Add Even More Soldiers to Fight Militants," while "Taliban's Two Branches Agree to Put Focus on an Offensive"—that is the Afghan and Pakistani wings of the movement. While not explicitly invoking the phrase "Af-Pak" now being widely used in military-intelligence circles, the stories make clear that strategists view the two countries as merging into a single theater of war.