In six raids in the early morning of July 31, agents from Costa Rica's Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) arrested six men and two women in the eastern province of Limón in connection with the murder of environmental worker Jairo Mora Sandoval the night of May 30-31. The authorities were planning to charge the men—four Costa Ricans and two Nicaraguans—with participating in the murder; the women, the wives of two of the men, reportedly would be charged with the possession of stolen property and with stealing eggs of the leatherback turtle, an endangered species. The raids came amid growing pressure for action in the two-month-old case, including a protest in San José and statements by a United Nations human rights official, John Knox, and a US Congress member, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA).

Some 10 armed men identified as security guards from a mining project threatened and detained two foreign volunteers for the Honduras Accompaniment Project (PROAH) for more than two hours on July 25 in the Nueva Esperanza community in the northern Honduran department of Atlántida. Area communities have faced threats and harassment for at least a year while organizing in opposition to open-pit mining by Minerales Victoria, part of the Alutech metal company owned by Lenir Pérez. The two international volunteers, one French and one Swiss, went to Nueva Esperanza hoping that their presence would deter further aggression by the mining company. Less than 24 hours later security guards and a group of mineworkers threatened them and forced them to leave the community. 

On July 25 US District Judge David Proctor in Birmingham, Alabama, dismissed a 2009 lawsuit seeking to hold the Alabama-based Drummond Co. Inc. coal company liable for killings by right-wing paramilitaries near a Drummond mine in Colombia. The suit, Balcero Giraldo v. Drummond Co., charged that the company had been paying the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which the US listed as a terrorist organization in 2001, to protect a rail line used to ship Drummond coal. Judge Proctor based his decision on the US Supreme Court's April 17 decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which sharply restricted the use of the 1789 Alien Tort Statute for foreign nationals to sue for human rights violations that took place outside the US. Proctor ruled that under the Kiobel decision the plaintiffs would need to present sufficient evidence that the alleged crimes were planned in the US; the judge said they had failed to do so.

Nicaraguan civil society groups have challenged plans by a Hong Kong company to build an interoceanic canal through the Central American country. Last month, representatives of indigenous and Creole community groups from Nicaragua's South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS, see map) called on the country's Supreme Court to repeal the law allowing the construction of the canal. "The passing means that the state accepts and approves in advance [a project] that will affect peoples of indigenous and of African descent, who had been excluded from the decision-making process," the Nicaragua Center for Human Rights (CINDH) said in a statement. "There has to be a consultation with the indigenous population, because this project will affect the entire population with its own traditions and way of life," said Allen Clair Duncan, head of the communal government of Monkey Point, where a deep-water port is set to be built as part of the canal project.

A court in Trujillo, Peru, issued a ruling July 23 absolving former National Police colonel Elidio Espinoza and nine troops who served under him in the deaths of four suspected "delinquents" in the coastal city in 2007. Espinoza, who was accused of operating a "death squad" within the National Police, had been sentenced to life in prison by the Public Ministry, the branch of Judicial Power with authority over government officials, for the crimes of kidnapping, homicide, and abuse of authority. After the ruling was issued, Espinoza led his supporters in a public celebration in Trujillo's Plaza de Armas. (Peru21, RPP, July 23)

The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism on July 29 urged Chilean authorities to refrain from applying anti-terrorism legislation that directly impacts the Mapuche indigenous people. Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson made his first official visit to Chile, finding that "the anti-terrorism legislation has been disproportionately and unfairly applied against Mapuche defendants, and has been implemented without a coherent policy for distinguishing those cases that meet the threshold test for an act of terrorism and those that do not." Referring to Chile's 1984 anti-terrorism law, Emmerson addressed the impact that the law has on indigenous land protests. His statement stressed the need for an end to impunity for the crimes committed during violent land protests, adding that the victims of such violence should also have their rights adequately protected.

OK, here's one to file under "all too telling irony." Egyptian authorities have banned Yemeni rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman from entering the country for "security reasons." Karman was held at Cairo airport on arrival and sent back to Yemen. The first Arab woman to win the Nobel peace prize had voiced support for loyalists of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and protested his ouster by the military. Karman was due to make an appearance at a Cairo sit-in by Morsi supporters. The Anti-Coup Alliance said Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, also a Nobel laureate, "is to be held responsible for banning activists and Nobel Prize winners from entering Egypt." (AFP, Aug. 4)

Persistent claims that Afghanistan's Taliban are backed by ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, will certainly be enflamed by the Aug. 3 attack on the Indian consulate in Jalalabad. Nine were killed and some 25 wounded in the coordinated suicide blast and armed assault. No Indian officials were killed, though the blast badly damaged a mosque and dozens of homes and small shops nearby. (Reuters, Aug. 3) A story in India Today on the same day as the attacks claimed that Delhi had warned its ambassador in Kabul, Amar Sinha, of a Pakistan-based  plot to assassinate him in a suicide attack, and recommended he beef up security measures. Sepcial commandos from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), already guarding the embassy in Kabul, were to be deployed to the consulates in Kandahar, Heart, Mazar and Jalalabad. Apparently, just too late...