Judge Abdul-Amir al-Rubaie of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI) Feb. 19 postponed the trial of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist accused of throwing his shoes at former US president George W. Bush. The new trial date is set for March 12. Al-Zaidi's lawyers argued that Bush's visit was not official and therefore the charge of assaulting a foreign leader should not apply. The trial was postponed so the court could determine if Bush's visit was "official" and respond to the defense.

Four prisoners who were released from Guantánamo Bay and sent back to their home country of Iraq last month have been detained by authorities there and are being interrogated, Iraqi officials confirmed Feb. 17. "The government is reviewing their files to see if there are any charges against them," said Wijdan Mikhail Salim, the minister of human rights. She said that they will be released if not found guilty of any crimes. Following contradictory statements by Iraqi officials, rights groups have expressed concern about the condition and whereabouts of the men, who were initially detained by the US in Afghanistan.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called on the Barack Obama administration Feb. 10 to end the indefinite detention of journalists by the US military overseas. The organization cited 14 cases in which US forces had detained journalists for long periods—with one reporter, in Iraq, still incarcerated. Paul Steiger, chairman of the committee and a former Wall Street Journal editor, also called on the government to investigate the killings of 16 reporters by US forces in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. (NYT, Feb. 11)

Two near-simultaneous car bombs ripped through a Baghdad bus station on Feb. 11, killing at least 16 people, amid a flare-up of violence across Iraq that claimed more than 20 lives and left some 60 injured. Officials said the parked cars blew up near the bus station in the Shi'ite district of Bayaah in western Baghdad and that most of the 16 dead and 43 wounded were men—many Shi'ite pilgrims en route to Karbala.

The journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush, will face trial on Feb. 19 for assaulting a visiting head of state, with a maximum 15-year prison term, Iraqi officials have announced. Muntader al-Zaidi's lawyers lost an appeal to have the charge against him reduced to that of insulting Bush, rather than assaulting him. (Reuters, Feb. 8)

Officials in Iraq's Kirkuk province charge that twice in the last two weeks the US military violated the security agreement signed in November by attacking criminal suspects without coordinating with Iraqi forces. In the first episode last month, US soldiers fatally shot an Iraqi couple in their home near Kirkuk after the wife reached for a pistol hidden under a mattress, according to US and Iraqi accounts. The couple's 8-year-old daughter was wounded. The shooting was reported at the time, but the charges of failure to coordinate emerged on Feb. 6—hours after a US raid in which a 58-year-old man was shot dead outside Kirkuk. (NYT, Feb. 7)

US forces shot two Shi'ite pilgrims the night of Feb. 7 as they walked to Karbala for the Arbaeen holy day, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said. The victims were a man and a woman, and the man later died of his injuries, the official said. Reports from witnesses said an eight-year-old girl was killed. The US military admitted to the accidental discharge of a weapons. The Interior Ministry said the shooting took place east of Diwaniya, about 110 miles south of Baghdad. Two other pilgrims were killed on Sunday in the Qahira district of Baghdad by a roadside bomb. (NYT, Feb. 8; CNN, AP, Feb. 7)

Iraq's provincial elections Jan. 31 saw 4,000 women as candidates for 147 of the roughly 440 seats on provincial councils in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces, and many of them will be guaranteed seats under an electoral quota system. Regardless of the votes their candidates receive, parties are required to give every third seat to a woman, according to a report by the International Crisis Group. The ultimate share of seats held by women will depend on the distribution of votes among parties, the report said. But some woman candidates quoted by the media questioned how significant the change really is.