US drone attacks on Pakistan's northwestern borderlands are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, officials in Islamabad claimed after a new attack April 4 killed 13 people. The officials say up to 1 million people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape the US missile attacks as well as bombings by the Pakistani army.

Pakistan's newly re-instated chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has called a court hearing into a video in circulation showing the public flogging of a teenage girl in the northwestern Swat Valley, where a peace-for-sharia deal has been brokered with local Taliban leaders. He has ordered top officials from North West Frontier Province to appear and produce the girl, who is shown in the video being held down by two men while a third hits her with a strap as she cries out in pain.

The US Navy April 3 reassigned Lieutenant Commander William Kuebler, a military lawyer who had been in charge of defending Guantánamo detainee Omar Khadr, after Kuebler filed a formal complaint against a military official overseeing the case. Kuebler had worked on the case for two years before he was fired after alleging that the military's chief Guantanamo defense lawyer, Colonel Peter Masciola, had a conflict of interest in overseeing the case. Kuebler said Masciola should be removed from the case because Masciola said Khadr should also face civil liability for the alleged killing of a US soldier, despite his role overseeing Khadr's defense. Khadr is the only Canadian citizen currently being held in Guantanamo, and Canadian officials have said they may investigate the circumstances surrounding Kuebler's removal.

An improvised bomb exploded outside a popular fast-food restaurant near a public square, killing at least two people and wounded eight others April 3 in Isabela township, Basilan Island, in the conflicted southern Philippine region of Mindanao. Although nobody has claimed responsibility, Basilan is a stronghold of Abu Sayyaf, a militant group which is on the US list of terrorist organizations. The group on April 2 freed a Filipino Red Cross worker after 10 weeks of captivity in the nearby island of Jolo, but continues to hold two other hostages— a Swiss and an Italian. (AP, April 3)

Officials in Nuevo Laredo have destroyed more than 35 statues dedicated to a "Death Saint" popular with drug traffickers—prompting protests from followers of the "folk Catholic" cult, who charge religious discrimination and have demanded a meeting with President Felipe Calderón. The statues, most depicting a robed skeleton resembling the Grim Reaper, line roads and highways around the Mexican border city. More than 30 such shrines have been destroyed in the campaign launched this week by city police backed up by federal army troops.

Eleven people were found shot to death around Mexico April 4, some bearing signs of torture and left with threatening "narco-messages." Four of the victims were found in a car in Apatzingán, Michoacán, along with a message threatening the Zetas, the paramilitary arm of the Gulf Cartel. The message was signed "La Familia," Michoacán's reigning crime machine.

The Obama administration's chief law enforcement officials traveled to Cuernavaca April 2 on Thursday to meet with their Mexican counterparts and begin formalizing plans to join forces against the drug cartels. "There's no doubt that the vast majority of weapons seized in Mexico come from the United States," said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. "This is a reality we have to face in the United States, and it's one Mexicans have long had to confront. We will take responsibility on our side to work with Mexico to get a handle on this serious problem."

The Mexican Senate April 2 passed an amendment to the country's constitution that would permit seizure of property from suspected drug traffickers and other criminals prior to conviction. Under the proposed amendment, which will now be sent to the lower house, prosecutors may seek the seizure of property and income derived from organized crime, including illegal narcotic sales and kidnapping. Currently, a conviction on the charges is required before property can be seized. The proceeds of the seizures will be used to pay for criminal investigations and to compensate victims. The bill passed only after safeguards for tenants and landlords who are uninvolved in crime were included. (Jurist, April 3)