Moroccan protesters blockaded the border with the Spanish enclave of Melilla Aug. 13, effectively shutting it down. Since mid-July, Morocco's government has issued five statements accusing Spanish police of abusing Moroccans in the enclave, as well as charging that a Spanish civil guard sea patrol abandoned a boat filled with eight ill African migrants in the Mediterranean after intercepting them trying to enter Spain. "The Kingdom of Morocco is astonished that no official answer was offered by Spanish authorities until now over the cases of racist drift by the Spanish police," said the Foreign Ministry in a statement. The two countries' kings spoke by telephone this week to try to ease tensions. (AP, Aug. 13; Reuters, Expatica, Aug. 11)

Western Sahara's Polisario Front rebels on May 2 condemned the UN Security Council for not including human rights in resolution 1920, extending by one year the mandate of the UN mission for the Morocco-occupied territory, MINURSO. But in a victory for Morocco, the text makes no mention of any explicit mechanism to monitor allegations of human rights violations. "Unfortunately, we believe this is a scandal for the credibility of the United Nations and the Security Council," Polisario Front's Mohamed Abdelaziz told AFP at a refugee camp for Western Sahara refugees in Algeria.

Moroccan authorities "violently" put down peaceful protests in Western Sahara earlier this week, local human rights activist Aminatou Haidar said March 10. The crackdown on the two protests was Rabat's "response" to a request made by EU president Herman Van Rompuy at an EU-Morocco summit in Spain over the weekend that Morocco make progress on human rights, Haidar said in a statement.

In a surprise move, Mauritania's Constitutional Council on March 4 rejected 10 articles of an anti-terrorism law passed by country's parliament in January. The 10 articles that were thrown out as unconstitutional would have allowed tapping of telephone calls and e-mail, as well as warrantless home searches and night raids on houses at any time. Other articles would have allowed the incarceration of minors, extended the period of "preventive detention" by the police to four years and barred any challenge to terrorism charges made by police.

A criminal court in Algeria Feb. 21 acquitted former Guantánamo Bay detainee Mustafa Hemlili of charges of counterfeiting and affiliation with a militant group. Hemlili was released from Guantánamo, along with fellow inmate Hederbash Sufian, after a six-year detention period. The court separated the trials of the two defendants, stating that the only link between them was the date of their release. Sufian's trial was postponed due to poor health after his lawyers presented evidence showing that he suffers from mental trauma as a result of his treatment at the US naval facility. Hemlili had traveled with family members to Mali, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan without a passport before going to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region to work with an international relief agency assisting Afghan refugees. After the 9-11 attacks, Hemlili was captured in Peshawar, Pakistan, with a forged Iraqi passport. (Jurist, Feb. 22)

Niger's new ruling junta lifted a curfew and reopened the borders a day after consolidating control in a Feb. 18 coup d'etat that toppled President Mamadou Tandja. The army stormed the palace during a cabinet meeting and seized Tandja and detained his ministers before announcing it was suspending a constitution that the 71-year-old leader had pushed through with a contested referendum last year. "The situation is under control," assured junta spokesman Col. Goukoye Abdoulkarim. "There is no single voice of dissension in either Niamey or in other parts of the country."

Moroccan authorities ordered closed the independent news magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire and seized its assets this week, following what editors and press freedom advocates call a long campaign of harassment. Liquidators took control of the country's most critical publication this week after a Casablanca commercial appeals court declared Jan. 25 that Le Journal Hebdomadaire's former publishing group, Media Trust, and its current one, Trimedia, were bankrupt.

Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Michele M. Leonhart, the acting administrator of the DEA, announced that Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure and Idriss Abelrahman arrived in the Southern District of New York Dec. 18 to face charges of conspiracy to commit acts of "narco-terrorism" and conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The charges stem from the defendants' alleged agreement to transport cocaine through West and North Africa with the intent to support three terrorist organizations—al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM), and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). All three have been designated by the US Department of State as "Foreign Terrorist Organizations."