From Amnesty International, Aug. 15:

The Egyptian authorities must immediately drop charges against a woman blogger and activist accused of defaming the military on Twitter, Amnesty International said today. Asmaa Mahfouz, 26, was summoned by military prosecutors on Sunday and later released on bail of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,356) after posting messages on the social media network expressing concerns about the Egyptian justice system and the actions of the military government, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

On Aug. 7, nine former Salvadoran military officials accused in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests, including ex-defense minister Rafael Humberto Larios and air force Gen. Rafael Bustillo, were handed over to a criminal court in El Salvador after a Spanish court issued international arrest warrants. The Salvadoran government said in a statement that the men, among 20 ex-soldiers indicted by a Spanish judge in May, were in the custody of a civilian court that handles extradition cases. The suspects turned themselves in at a military installation, as Salvadoran police were preparing to arrest them on an extradition order from Interpol. A tenth suspect, former army chief of staff Rene Emilio Ponce, died in May, before the indictments were issued.

Students from the Faculty of Ethnology of the State University of Haiti (UEH) set up barricades at the nearby Champ de Mars, Port-au-Prince's main park, early in August to protest what they said was an increase in crime in the area. The protests started after an ethnology student, Philibert Sergo, was killed in a robbery in July. According to police inspector Dupont Joseph, 23 armed robberies were reported in the zone in June and July, although he said the number was declining.

US agents have been posted in recent weeks at a Mexican military base to carry out intelligence and planning work with Mexican officials against drug cartels, according to an Aug. 7 article by New York Times reporter Ginger Thompson. The team includes "fewer than two dozen” agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials and "retired military personnel members from the Pentagon's Northern Command," Thompson wrote. They are working at a "compound modeled after "fusion intelligence centers' that the United States operates in Iraq and Afghanistan to monitor insurgent groups." The US is also "considering plans to deploy private security contractors” in a counter-narcotics unit of the Mexican police, according to the article.

After a six-hour meeting on Aug. 13 at the University of Concepción in Chile's central Biobío region, leaders of the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH) announced their rejection of a government proposal for talks to resolve more than two months of militant protests for reform of the educational system. Instead, CONFECH leaders said they would push ahead with a series of actions they had announced the day before: a nationwide one-day school strike on Aug. 18; participation in a 48-hour general strike on Aug. 24 and 25 called by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the main Chilean labor federation; and continued pressure on the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera at least until Sept. 11, the anniversary of the bloody coup that started the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

A New York judge on Aug. 11 dismissed a suit seeking to force an investigation of New York-licensed Guantánamo Bay psychologist Dr. John Leso for his development of "interrogation techniques." The Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) sued the New York State Department of Education Office of Professional Discipline (OPD) last year to force a professional misconduct investigation. The OPD filed a motion to dismiss the case for lack of standing:

A new report from a team of British and Pakistani journalists released by the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds one US drone strike occurs every four days in Pakistan, and that the attacks have killed as many as 775 civilians, including 168 children, since 2004. The report also challenges a recent claim by President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, that no civilians have been killed in the drone attacks for nearly a year. According to the Bureau’s researchers, at least 45 civilians were killed in 10 drone attacks during the last year.

Tunisian police fired tear-gas on Aug. 15 as a rally called by the General Workers' Union (UGTT) was joined by some 2,000 protesting the lack of political reform since the overthrow of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January. The UGTT, which was the only legal trade union federation during Ben Ali's 23-year rule, sought a demonstration "faithful to the souls of the martyrs [of January] and for the achievement of the aims of the revolution." The legal rally demanded a "purge of corrupt judges and lawyers," under the slogan "Free Tunisia, throw out the thieves." But a hundreds-strong breakaway demonstration attempted to march on the interior ministry, and clashed with riot police who blocked the way. The breakaway marchers shouted "new revolution" and "the people want the system to fall," while accusing the interior ministry of "terrorism." (Middle East Online, July 15)