IndustriALL Global Union, a European industrial union federation founded in Copenhagen on June 19, 2012, is calling for "mobilizations, awareness-raising activities, and letter writing" Feb. 18-24 to protest labor violations in Mexico, with a special focus on the Finnish-based auto parts multinational PKC Group. In December the company's Mexican subsidiary, Arneses y Accesorios de México, SA de CV, laid off 122 workers from its three plants in Ciudad Acuña, in Coahuila state near the border with Texas; all the members of a militant union's local executive committee were among those dismissed, and the rest were thought to be supporters of the local. PKC has since signed a contract with what the laid-off workers describe as a company union.

The Haitian labor organizing group Batay Ouvriye reports that in early February Leo Vedél, a worker at the Premium Apparel assembly plant in Port-au-Prince, was assaulted and then fired when he demanded that he be paid the legal minimum wage for piece work in the assembly sector, 300 gourdes (about US$7.12) for an eight-hour day. When management rejected the demand, the majority of the plant's workers organized a protest. A manager named Gédéon beat Vedél, who had to be treated in a hospital. Premium, owned by Clifford Apaid of the Apaid family, produces T-shirts for Montreal-based Gildan Activewear Inc. The Rapid Response Network, established by Florida-based One Struggle, is asking for calls to Jason M. Greene, Gildan's supply director in South Carolina (843-606-3750), to demand Vedél's reinstatement with compensation for time and injuries, the firing of Gédéon, and respect for workers' rights. (Rapid Response Network, Feb. 17)

A Rabat military court on Feb. 17 handed prison sentences, including eight life terms, to a group of 24 Sahrawis accused of killing members of the security forces in Morocco-occupied Western Sahara in 2010. Four received 30-year terms, while a 25th defendant was tried in absentia and given a life sentence. The charges, including "forming criminal gangs, and violence against the security forces leading to deaths and the mutilation of corpses," stemmed from violence surrounding the November 2010 eviciton of a protest encampment at Gdim Izik outside Laayoune, capital of the occupied territory. Amnesty International condemned the trial as "flawed from the outset," and called for an investigation of claims that incriminating statements had been made under torture. (Reuters, Al Jazeera, Feb. 17)

Military lawyers from the US Navy on Feb. 12 said that surveillance equipment deployed throughout the Guantánamo Bay detention center was not used to breach attorney-client privilege. The officials indicated that devices used to record audio and video were routinely placed throughout the detention center, but they were only used for security purposes. The surveillance devices were often concealed in common objects such as smoke detectors. The lawyers admitted that a person would not know they were under surveillance, but that the prosecuting lawyers did not review any of the recordings. Officials also indicated that some legal mailings had been opened and searched for contraband and then delivered to the detainee. They said that they did not read any of the documents.

A suicide bombing on Feb. 16 killed Brig-Gen. Aouni Ali, the head of Iraq's main intelligence academy, and two guards in Tal Afar, near the northern city of Mosul, while in  Sulaiman Pak, just north of Baghdad, a judge was killed by a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to his car. The judge, Ahmed al-Bayati, had previously received threats while working as an anti-terror investigator, and had to pay kidnappers a $150,000 ransom after his son was abducted last year. That same day, a roadside bomb killed an army lieutenant and wounded two other soldiers in Heet, northwest of the capital. Iraq has seen a rise in attacks in recent weeks, with January the deadliest month since September, according to a tally, although the level of violence is nowhere near that during the peak of the sectarian war in 2007.

Malaysian security forces remain in a stand-off with some 100 men they say are armed insurgents from a rebel faction in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao, who are accused of having taken over a village in a remote part of Sabah state on Borneo Feb. 14. But the Philippine government maintains the men are unarmed Filipino peasant migrants who had been promised land in the area. The Malaysian inhabitants of the village, named as Kampung Tanduao, have reportedly been forced to flee. Malaysian police forces say the invaders procialmed themselves the "royal army" of the Sultanate of Sulu, which has an historic claim to the area. By some accounts, the men have raised the Philippine flag in the village, which is now surrounded by Malaysian troops. The Philippine military has meanwhile deployed naval vessels and an aircraft to the coast of Malaysian Borneo. 

After tense negotiations, the Red Cross transported to safety Feb. 15 two Colombian National Police agents being held by the FARC guerillas since Jan. 25. The release had been delayed due to large groups of journalists in the vicinity of the drop-off point according to leader of Colombians for Peace (CCP), Piedad Cordoba, who helped broker the negotiations. The armed forces had ceased military activity around Miranda in the southwest Cauca department to provide safe passage for the Red Cross. The humanitarian mission will next fly to Pasto to secure the release of a soldier captured by the FARC on Jan. 31 during clashes in southern Nariño department. (Colombia Reports, Feb. 14)

Britain's The Telegraph on Feb. 13 reports on a document reportedly found by their reporter in the ruins of a Gendarmerie Nationale barracks outside Timbuktu that had been used by the jihadists and then destroyed in a French air-strike. The document, purportedly the notes from a March 18, 2012 leadership meeting of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), chaired by AQIM "prince" Abu Musab Abdul Wadoud, is said to lay bare AQIM's plan to consolidate control of northern Mali, stating: "We had to think of the necessity to draw a plan to command and control the jihad activities there at this critical moment and target all efforts to achieve the required goals." The supposed document is portrayed as especially expressing concerns over Ansar Dine, the faction that controlled Timbuktu, as too independent.