Accused Burmese drug lord Naw Kham was executed in China on March 1 along with three accomplices in the murder of 13 Chinese merchant sailors on the Mekong River in 2011. The executions were carried out by a court in Kunming, Yunnan province. Thai national Hsang Kham, Lao national Zha Xika, and Yi Lai, who was named as "stateless," were executed by lethal injection along with Naw Kham. In an unusual move, authorities allowed state media to film Naw Kham during his transfer from a detention center to the court's execution area. China Central Television showed police removing Naw Kham's handcuffs and binding his arms behind his back with rope, a standard ritual before executions in China. The executions themselves were not broadcast, as cameras were not allowed in the death chamber. But the spectacle still sparked dissent on the Internet within China. 

The International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh (ICTB) on Feb. 28 sentenced to death Jamaat-e-Islami party (JI) leader Delwar Hossain Sayeedee. Following the death sentence, violence between police and activists from Sayeedee's party ensued throughout the country resulting in at least 30 deaths while more than 300 were wounded. Sayeedee was found guilty by the court for mass killing, rape, arson, looting and forcing minority Hindus to convert to Islam during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. He is the third senior party official convicted by the international tribunal. Defense counsel stated that he will appeal the sentence. Sayeedee is a former member of Parliament in the National Assembly of Bangladesh and one of the leaders of the JI Bangladesh. He has been charged with 20 crimes contained in the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act of 1973, including genocide, arson, rape and torture.

The Sultanate of Sulu, an autonomous kingdom within the Philippines, claimed March 1 that 10 members of the royal army were killed and four more injured in an attack by Malaysian authorities on Lahad Datu, the village seized by the Sulu partisans in Sabah state on Borneo. Malaysian authorities deny any reports of violence. Sultanate spokesman Abraham Idjirani told reporters in Manila that he was informed of the attack by Raj Muda Agbimuddin Kiram, who is leading the royal army partisans at Lahad Datu. Kiram is the brother of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III. Idjirani said Malaysian officials are seeking "to cover up the truth." (Philippine Star, Reuters via Malaysia Chronicle, March 1)

Twelve men charged with the murder of a prominent Islamic scholar, including Shabaab's purported leader, were sentenced to death after a court found them guilty in Bosaso, commercial capital of Somalia's autonomous enclave of Puntland. The Puntland North Eastern regional Military Court sentenced the 12, including Shabab chief Ahmed Abdi Godane, to death by firing squad. Under Puntland law, all terrorism cases are held at military courts. Sheikh Ahmed Haji Abdirahman, a cleric, professor and doctor, was shot dead as he was leaving a mosque near his home in Bosaso in December 2011. The killing sparked an international outcry from the Somali diaspora around the world. The deceased Sheikh Abdirahman's friend and colleague Sheikh Abdiqadir Nur Farah—who spoke out against Shabab after Abdirahman was killed—was recently killed in Puntland's political capital Garowe while praying at a mosque. (Garowe Online , Feb. 27 via All Africa)

Hundreds of Islamists demonstrated in Aman, Jordan, after Friday prayers Feb. 22 to demand faster political reform after an election weeks earlier that produced a mostly pro-government parliament. Muslim Brotherhood followers marched from the main Husseini mosque to downtown Amman in the first such protest since the Jan. 23 ballot. The group boycotted the vote, saying electoral rules were loaded against it. Protesters chanted: "Reform is what is required; Justice and freedom and not these sham elections and deputies." (Daily Star, Lebanon, Feb. 22)

One of the leaders of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the FARC, on Feb. 24 said that they are not a drug trafficking organization and though they have entered into peace negotiations with the government, they have not relinquished their aim to "take power." Rodrigo Granda, considered the FARC's foreign minister, told newspaper El Colombiano that the accusation that the FARC is nothing but a drug trafficking organization "is a shame." Referring to the four countries that have observed the peace process thus far, he said: "We are not drug traffickers, we are an organization with clear political policy ideas and for this reason the government is obliged to sit down and talk with us. Colombia would not sit down with a group of drug traffickers, Cuba would not sit as a guarantor with a group of drug traffickers, Venezuela and Chile would not sit down with a group of drug dealers, I don't think Norway has received a group of drug traffickers."

The Colombian government on Feb. 18 denied the disappearances of 11 people during the 1985 Palace of Justice siege, contradicting previous court rulings that held the military responsible. Despite widespread belief to the contrary, the government claimed before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CIDH) that the 11 individuals who remain unaccounted for after 27 years actually died in the fire which consumed the palace. And on Feb. 27, the Prosecutor General called upon the Supreme Court of Justice to officially absolve retired colonel Alfonso Plazas Vega, who had been sentenced in February 2012 to 30 years in connection with the deaths.

You knew this one was inevitable. It is profoundly odious to have to favorably cite the monstrous Alan Dershowitz, but he's raised the alarm on something really alarming—not without distorting it in the service of his propaganda crusade. In a comment appearing Feb. 25 on Canada's National Post (among other places) Dershowitz portrays Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, apparently shortlisted to succeed Pope Benedict, as floating conspiracy theories about how the Vatican sex scandal (now reaching surreal proportions, as the Daily Mail gloats) was instrumented by (you guessed it) the Jews.