The government of Libya has released two men convicted in 2007 of planning to overthrow the government and meeting with a foreign official, Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced March 10. Jamal al-Haji and Faraj Humaid were arrested as part of a larger group in Tripoli in February 2007, in advance of a planned demonstration in the city's Martyrs Square commemorating the deaths of 11 people during a 2006 clash between protesters and police. The nine other men arrested as part of the so-called Boufayed Group were released by the end of 2008—including supposed ringleader Idris Boufayed, who suffers from lung cancer. HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson called the men's release "a particularly welcome step in light of the Libyan authorities' stated initiative of breaking with the past."

A 75-year-old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in prison for associating with two young men who are not close relatives, her lawyer said March 9. The newspaper al-Watan said the woman, Khamisa Sawadi, met with two men, both aged 24, in April after she asked them to bring some loaves of bread to her home. The two men, her nephew and his business partner, were arrested by the religious police after delivering the bread, the newspaper said. They were also sentenced to lashes and imprisonment. The verdict against Sawadi, a Syrian who was married to a Saudi, also orders her deportation after her sentence is served. Her lawyer said he would appeal. (AP, March 10)

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Martin Scheinin March 10 cited the case of Canadian citizen and former US detainee Maher Arar in presenting a report critical of international counter-terrorism practices to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. Scheinin flagged Arar's deportation from the US as an example of how intelligence sharing without "adequate safeguards" can lead to human rights violations. The report was broadly critical of US "rendition" policies and also censured the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries for providing assistance to the US.

The Obama administration announced it will not replace two US brigades (12,000 troops) now departing Iraq. The step will leave 128,000 US troops in Iraq through the December 2009, parliamentary elections—ostensibly the last to be conducted under US auspices. By August, 2010, another 80,000 to 100,000 troops will be withdrawn, with all combat forces scheduled to be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011.

Leaders of Pakistan's Mamoond tribe, which straddles the Afghan border in the country's Bajaur tribal district, signed an agreement with the government March 9 to end their insurgency, refuse shelter to foreign militants, and respect state authority. The pact commits the Mamoond to turn over key figures of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Bajaur, lay down arms, disband militant groups and shut militant training camps.

Twelve of the 92 videotapes destroyed by the CIA contained evidence of torture, according to redacted documents filed March 6 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) had acknowledged last week that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) destroyed 92 videotapes of high value terrorism suspect interrogations, in response to an August 2008 judicial order that the CIA turn over information regarding the tapes or provide specific justifications on why it could not release the information.

The US March 9 vowed to keep up military surveillance in waters off China and protested what it called harassment one day earlier of a US surveillance ship operated by civilian contractors for the Navy's Military Sealift Command. The Pentagon charged that a Chinese intelligence vessel and four others "shadowed and maneuvered dangerously close" to the USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea, then threw obstacles in the water as it tried to leave. During the confrontation, the Impeccable crew sprayed some of the Chinese sailors with a fire hose, causing some of the Chinese sailors to strip to their underwear.

A March 6 headline in the official Chinese news agency Xinhua acknowledged that the declaration of March 28 as "Serfs Emancipation Day" is intended as a "tit-for-tat" against "Dalai clique." The rubber-stamp parliament of Tibet Autonomous Region adopted a motion in January to commemorate the day in 1959 when China officially dissolved the local government of Tibet. (Tibetan Review, March 9)