Cindy Sheehan, mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, was among several US citizens who arrived in Cuba on Jan. 6 in preparation for a series of actions Jan. 9-13 to protest the US military's use of its Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba to detain Muslim men captured as alleged "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror." The rest of the delegation is scheduled to arrive on Jan. 9 for a press conference that day in Havana, followed by a Jan. 10 conference in the Cuban city of Guantanamo on prison conditions and international law.

On Dec. 29 Chilean judge Haroldo Brito sentenced 13 former security agents to prison terms ranging from five to 18 years for four revenge murders carried out after a September 1986 attempt to kill Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990. Alvaro Corbalan Castilla, the former operations chief of the National Information Center (CNI), received the heaviest sentence, 18 years; he is already serving a 15-year sentence in the 1987 "Operation Albania" murder case. The defendants are expected to appeal the sentences.

Paraguayan general Alejandro Fretes Davalos, who led the imprisonment and torture of hundreds of people under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), died on Dec. 29 following a lengthy illness. Fretes had graduated from Chile's Military School, where he served under Augusto Pinochet before Pinochet seized power. Fretes also trained at the US Army School of the Americas in Panama in 1956 while still a major, taking the "Field Grade Officer" course.

On the night of Jan. 1, an armed group entered the village of El Cedro in Yarumal municipality, in the Colombian department of Antioquia, and shot to death four civilians, two men and two women. The victims included Yolanda Munoz Herrera, vice president of El Cedro's Community Action Board, and Jose Argemiro Mora Zapata, who was the Community Action Board's president and managed a local radio station in the village.

A little more than a year ago, it was a mysterious sweet smell that mystified New Yorkers. This time a mysterious sinister smell. A psychological warfare experiment? From Reuters, Jan. 10:

A powerful, mysterious smell of gas wafted through much of Manhattan and parts of New Jersey on Monday, forcing building evacuations and a temporary suspension of commuter train service before dissipating by mid-afternoon.

From the Middle East Newsline, Jan. 8:

Morocco has reported another crackdown on Al Qaida. Officials said security forces have arrested Al Qaida operatives suspected of recruiting Muslims for the Sunni insurgency war in Iraq. They said the Al Qaida network contained scores, if not hundreds, of people, and operated in several major cities in the North African kingdom.

Unknown Somali fighters opened fire with automatic weapons and launched rockets at Ethiopian and allied Somalian troops in Mogadishu Jan. 9. The attack came as the troops had established themselves in a building formerly used by the police force. No casualties have yet been reported, but the gunfight lasted several minutes, and was the second attack targeting Ethiopian troops in Somalia's capital in the past three days. Somalia's Ethiopia-backed interim government has postponed plans to disarm the public for the moment, but pledges to carry them out—by force if necessary. (Garowe Online, Somalia, Jan. 9)

Another sign of Nigeria's social breakdown—and similar tensions are reported from Ghana. From Xinhua, Jan. 9:

Six persons were killed at the weekend in a bloody clash between herdsmen and farmers in Korenganuwa village in Nigeria's northwestern state of Zamfara, the official News Agency of Nigeria reported on Monday.