A US Army Special Forces soldier facing court-martial proceedings over the killing of an Afghan civilian in March 2008 has admitted to killing the man but argued during opening statements Feb. 19 that the act was committed in self defense. Master Sgt. Robert Newell of the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) was arraigned and charged with killing the unidentified Afghan and mutilating the corpse by cutting off an ear. Military prosecutors allege that the killing was premeditated, and that the civilian posed no threat to Newell.

A suicide bomber killed at least 28 and injured dozens Feb. 20 in Dera Ismail Khan, a town in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province—the latest in an escalating series of attacks aimed at the country's Shi'ite minority. The attack targeted the funeral procession for Sher Zeman, a Shi'ite leader who was gunned down in the city the day before. The blast sparked hours of rioting in which furious crowds torched shops, homes and cars. The army was called in and the town placed under curfew. (Daily Times, Pakistan, Feb. 21)

Gen. David D. McKiernan, top US commander in Afghanistan, said Feb. 18 that the heightened troop levels that President Barack Obama ordered for the country could remain in place for up to five years. Speaking at a Pentagon press conference a day after Obama ordered 17,000 additional troops to the country, said that the build-up "is not a temporary force uplift." He said the build-up would "need to be sustained for some period of time," and that he was looking at "the next three to four or five years." (NYT, Feb. 19)

Four prisoners who were released from Guantánamo Bay and sent back to their home country of Iraq last month have been detained by authorities there and are being interrogated, Iraqi officials confirmed Feb. 17. "The government is reviewing their files to see if there are any charges against them," said Wijdan Mikhail Salim, the minister of human rights. She said that they will be released if not found guilty of any crimes. Following contradictory statements by Iraqi officials, rights groups have expressed concern about the condition and whereabouts of the men, who were initially detained by the US in Afghanistan.

An Egyptian political dissident whose imprisonment strained relations between Cairo and Washington for more than three years was unexpectedly freed Feb. 18 in an apparent goodwill gesture toward the new US administration. Ayman Nour, who ran against President Hosni Mubarak in 2005 and was later imprisoned on widely questioned forgery charges, was released for medical reasons, the Egyptian prosecutor's office said. Nour, who has heart and eye ailments, was due to be freed in 2010 after a five-year sentence. His case came to symbolize a campaign by Mubarak's National Democratic Party to silence political opponents. (Newsday, Feb. 19)

On the eve of the international London Conference on Anti-Semitism, Venezuelan Jewish community leader Sammy Eppel, director of the human rights commission of B'nai B'rith and columnist for the Caracas daily El Universal, accused President Hugo Chávez of leading a state-sanctioned campaign against the country's Jews. Eppel said the campaign of anti-Semitism that hit world headlines with this January's Venezuelan synagogue attack actually began with a raid on a Jewish school in Caracas in 2004. The police were looking for weapons and explosives, but he pointed out that the raid coincided with a high-profile visit to Iran by Chávez. "It was, if you like, a gift for Ahmadinejad, to say that 'this is how I treat my Jews,'" Eppel said.

In a wave of coordinated demonstrations against the use of the army in northern Mexico's crackdown on the warring drug cartels, hundreds of protesters on Feb. 17 blocked the international bridges over the Rio Grande at Ciudad Juárez, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, as well as blocking streets and government buildings in in the northern industrial city of Monterrey and roads in the Gulf state of Veracruz. The cities were paralyzed for hours, and riot police used water cannons to disperse the protesters in Monterrey, where streets were blocked for a sixth day running by marchers chanting "Soldiers, get out!" Protesters accused the army of arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses. But Nuevo León Gov. Natividad González Parás (PRI) charged that protesters were recruited and paid by the Gulf Cartel. (AP, El Universal, Feb. 17)

A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Feb. 18 reversed an October district court order that called for the release of 17 Uighur detainees from Guantánamo Bay into the US. Lawyers for the detainees argued that the Uighurs' continued detention was improper, but the DC Circuit agreed with the government's position that admission of aliens into the US was a decision for either the executive or legislative branch, and that the detainees were not denied a statutory or constitutional right by being excluded.