In a surprise development, the US Supreme Court agreed June 29 to hear an appeal they had refused to hear in April, asking whether "foreign citizens imprisoned indefinitely" by the US military can go to federal court and whether their imprisonment amounts to "unlawful confinement" from which a federal judge might free them. The court is to hear arguments next term, which begins Oct. 1.

Our June issue featured the story "Resisting the New Euro-Missiles: Czech Dissidents Stand Up Again—This Time to the Pentagon!" by WW4 REPORT contributor Gwendolyn Albert, noting the emergence of popular opposition to US plans to build a radar base for the new "missile shield" in the Czech Republic. The "missile shield" has opened a new rift with Russia, and is surely topping the agenda in the Bush-Putin meeting underway at the Bush family estate in Kennebunkport, ME. Our June Exit Poll was: "Is the 'missile shield' actually intended to protect the US and the world from 'rogue' nations like Iran and North Korea, or is the 'real' enemy still Russia?" We received the following responses:

Sudan, Iraq and Somalia top an independent ranking of the world's leading failed states by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace. The annual "Failed States Index" ranks 177 countries according to 12 social, economic, political and military indicators. Leading benchmarks for failed state status are loss of physical control of territory or monopoly on the use of force, erosion of legitimate authority, and inability to provide reasonable public services.

Speaking on the eve of an African Union summit in Accra June 30, Libyan leader Moammar Qadaffi called on the continent to unite under a single government. Declaring himself a "soldier for Africa," Qaddafi said AU leaders had not yet achieved the dream of unity voiced half a century ago by Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, leading icon of African independence and unity. "For Africa, the matter is to be or not to be," Qadaffi told a cheering audience of students, activists and local Muslim leaders at the University of Ghana. "My vision is to wake up the African leaders to unify our continent."

Mauritania's independent news agency Al-Akhbar reported June 26 that security forces had arrested four men supposedly linked to "al-Qaeda in the Maghreb" in raids on some Internet cafes in the the capital, Nouakchott. The detainees are said to be four foreigners (two Moroccans and two Algerians) and a Saudi national of Mauritanian origin. The arrests coincided with the opening of a trial of 11 detainees accused of links to al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. (BBC Monitoring, AKI, June 26)

From East Timor & Indonesia Action Network, June 28:

The presence in Papua of a senior Indonesian army officer indicted on crimes against humanity charges in East Timor (now Timor-Leste) endangers human rights defenders and political activists and is a sign of the Indonesian government’s lack of commitment to justice and accountability a coalition of Indonesian and international human rights organisations said today.

The Philippine military is waging a "dirty war" against leftist activists and journalists, Human Rights Watch charged in a June 28 report, "Scared Silent: Impunity for Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines." Based on more than 100 interviews, the report details the involvement of security forces in the murder or "disappearance" of members of opposition parties and NGOs, journalists, outspoken clergy and anti-mining and agrarian reform advocates. "To date there have been no successful prosecutions of any member of the armed forces implicated in recent extrajudicial killings," the report states.

Raúl Reyes, secretary of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), issued a call June 29 for the suspension of military operations in the southwest of Colombia to allow for the transfer of the bodies of 11 lawmakers who died in guerilla captivity on the 18th. The call came in an open letter to the relatives of the legislators and former cabinet minister Alvaro Leyva Durán, who led the failed peace dialogue wiith the FARC in 1998 and has since been involved in efforts to free the hostages. The letter comes a day after the FARC's Joint Western Command (Comando Conjunto de Occidente) e-mailed a communique to the Colombian media asserting the legislators had been killed in crossfire between the guerillas and an "unidentified military group." (La Jornada, Mexico, June 29)