A Bahrain court on June 3 issued sentences to three protesters for allegedly taking part in anti-government protests as well as attempting to kill a police officer. The crimes were committed during an attack on police in a Shi'ite village near Manama which has been a hotbed of anti-government protests since 2011. The first accused protester has been sentenced to 15 years for attempted murder and taking part in the protests, while the other two protesters were given lesser sentences of 10 years and five years.

An Egyptian court on June 4 convicted 43 foreign and domestic non-governmental organization (NGO) employees of engaging political activity without proper documentation and of receiving funds from abroad in violation of Egyptian law. Those convicted include Europeans, Egyptians, other Arabs and at least 16 Americans, 15 of whom were convicted in absentia. The court ordered closure of the NGOs after meting out fines and prison sentences to employees ranging from one to five years. Affected NGOs include the US-based International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), Freedom House (FH), the International Center for Journalists and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Osiel Gabriel, an indigenous Terena, was killed on May 30 when Brazilian federal police violently removed a group of Terena protesters who had been occupying the Buriti estate in Sidrolandia, in the southern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, since May 15. At least three indigenous people and one police agent were treated at a local hospital with light injuries; eight protesters were arrested. The occupiers reportedly fought back with wooden clubs and bows and arrows and set some of the estate's buildings on fire. The authorities claimed police agents only used rubber bullet and tear gas; according to state police superintendent Edgar Paulo Marcon, the protesters fired on the agents.

On May 24 Chile's environmental regulator, Juan Carlos Monckeberg, ordered a suspension of construction at the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation's giant Pascua Lama mine because of violations of environmental laws. He also fined the company $16 million, the largest penalty Chile has ever imposed for an environmental violation. Monckeberg told the Reuters wire service on May 30 that the company would probably require one to two years to make the repairs that would allow it to resume construction.

The Collective for the Compensation of Cholera Victims (Comodevic) and Moun Viktim Kolera ("People Who Are Cholera Victims," Movik) sponsored a march in Port-au-Prince on May 31 to mark nine years since the arrival of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Marching from the Fort National neighborhood to the Justice Ministry and the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP), the protesters demanded that the international military and police force leave Haiti and called on the government to join legal actions seeking compensation from the United Nations (UN) for people affected by cholera. At least 8,096 people have died in a cholera epidemic that was set off in October 2010 by poor sanitation at a MINUSTAH base in the Central Plateau where Nepalese soldiers carrying the disease were stationed.

US prosecutors last month suffered a humiliating reversal in a Miami drug case involving two Colombian men amid accusations that evidence was improperly withheld from the defense. Defendants José Salazar Buitrago and John Finkelstein Winer, facing life in prison as their trial got underway, instead got a quick plea deal and terms of three years—with credit for nearly two years already spent in custody. The case turned suddenly after testimony that prosecutors knew about payments the Drug Enforcement Administration made to Colombian police in the case. Prosecutors said they didn't know about the payments—a claim dismissed as implausible by District Judge Marcia Cooke. The DEA payments, about $200 a month to at least 11 agents over some three years, apparently came from funds approved by the US under the Plan Colombia aid package. A tip about the payments was confirmed in cross-examination of the government's first witness, a Colombian National Police officer.  

As the  Organization of American States (OAS) summit opens under tight security in the historic Guatemalan city of Antigua—some 2,000 army and National Police troops deployed—fighting narco-trafficking is certain to top the agenda. Secretary of State John Kerry will be in attendance, with US Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske—prepared to oppose initiatives to reconsider the "war on drugs," including from Guatemala's otherwise arch-conservative President Otto Pérez Molina. But it remains to be seen if the summit will take up the iconoclastic recommendations of a draft report on drug policy released by the OAS last month. When the ground-breaking report was issued, OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza asserted, "this is not a conclusion but only the beginning of a long-awaited discussion." As the Guatemala summit opened June 3, he reiterated that the report will not be officially adopted by the international body, but that "it will be only a platform for discussion." This equivocation will doubtless be welcome in Washington, given the report's open dissidence from generations of "drug war" dogma.

The local anti-drug Fiscal (prosecutor) in Chachapoyas province, Amazonas region, has opened an investigation into 25 suspected of running an "opium mafia" within the security services. Among the 25 are six members of the National Police, a provincial prosecutor, and a pilot contracted by the DEA. The group is accused of overseeing the commercialization of poppy crops in ​Rodríguez de Mendoza province, a remote high jungle area of Amazonas. The pilot, whose name has not been released, worked for a local company used by the DEA. Opium production has boomed in Amazonas region over the past five years, and authorities say morphine laboratories have been established in the jungle. (La Republica, RPP, Aeronoticias, May 19)