At least 10 people were killed June 25 when elite troops from the Special Operations Battalion (BOPE) of Brazil's Military Police raided the Nova Holanda favela in Rio de Janeiro's sprawling northern district Complexo da Maré. Authorities said the deaths occurred following a gun battle between police and criminals taking advantage of protests sweeping through the city to loot and steal. One police officer was reportedly among the dead. Protests continue throughout the city; on the day of the clash, hundreds blocked streets for several hours in the outlying districts of Capao Redondo and Campo Limpo. The following day, violence exploded as some 100,000 marched in Belo Horizonte, where Brazil played Uruguay in Confederations Cup semi-finals. Stores were looted, vehicles burned, and one protester killed when he fell from an overpass. (Zero Hora, AP, June 27; Al Jazeera, June 26; Correio do Brasil, June 25)

Following two weeks of escalating protests by local campesinos, two were killed as National Police troops opened fire June 23 at Ocaña in Colombia's Norte de Santander department. There were reports of injuries on both sides in similar clashes in recent days. At least 10,000 from the Catatumbo Valley have joined the protests that erupted on June 10, demanding the government declare the area an autonomous "campesino reserve zone," and halt the eradication of coca crops. Protesters claim that cocaleros have not been offered alternatives to provide for their families. Juan Carlos Quintero, vice president of the Catatumbo Campesino Association, said "we directly blame President Juan Manuel Santos" in the deaths, accusing him of having ordered the repression. Authorities said that protesters had set fire to the municipal building and the local prosecuter's office in Tibu, and also charged the FARC is involved in the campaign. The FARC, whose leader "Timochenko" is believed to be operating from the Catatumbo area, issued a statement calling on authorities to lower the level of violence. (Colombia Reports, AP, June 23)

Guatemala's President Otto Pérez Molina said he is considering imposing a state of emergency in Salcajá, Quetzaltenango department, after an armed attack on a substation of the National Civil Police (PNC)  left eight officers dead and their commander abducted June 14. Authorities said the slain officers were disarmed, made to face down on the ground, and then shot in the head, execution-style. Pérez Molina attributed the attack to drug gangs operating in the area, with possible links to Mexican criminal networks such as the Sinaloa Cartel or Los Zetas. Jorge Santos of the International Center for Human Rights Research (CIDH), set up to secure political rights after Guatemala's civil war, said he hoped "this terror will not lead to greater levels of social control by the executive."

The union of lawyers in the West Bank announced June 13 that attorneys would suspend all their activities this weekend after anti-drug police in Bethlehem assaulted a lawyer. The union said in a statement that all its offices would be shut down in all West Bank districts, and called upon all members of the union's general assembly to join a sit-in in front of the district attorney's office. "We were shocked and couldn’t believe that a group of anti-drug police officers in Bethlehem assaulted a lawyer and strip searched him in a humiliating manner," the statement said. "What shocked us even more was that the district attorney was present and the attackers received instructions directly from the attorney general."

Peru's National Penal Chamber on June 7 sentenced one of the last "historic" leaders of the Shining Path guerilla movement to life in prison on terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Florencio Flores Hala AKA "Comrade Artemio" raised his fist in defiance as the sentence was read at a naval base in Callao, where the trial was carried out under tight security. He said that he preferred the death penalty over life imprisonment, adding: "I have nothing to ask forgiveness for, I have nothing to regret." "Artemio," 51, was also fined 500 million soles ($183 million) in damages. Attorney Alfredo Crespo called the sentence a "political statement," and his client a "political prisoner." After the guerilla movement was crushed in the 1990s, "Artemio" retreated to the high jungles of the Upper Huallaga Valley, where he led remnant Sendero Luminoso forces in a local insurgency.

More than 160 civil society organizations—claiming representation of hundreds of thousands of citizens in Mexico, Central America and the United States—sent an open letter to the OAS General Assembly meeting in the Guatemalan city of Antigua this week,  calling for alternatives to the so-called "war on drugs" that guarantee respect for human rights. "Our organizations have documented an alarming increase in violence and human rights violations," the letter states. "While we recognize that transnational crime and drug-trafficking play a role in this violence, we call on our governments to acknowledge that failed security policies that have militarized citizen security have only exacerbated the problem, and are directly contributing to increased human suffering in the region."

The Hamas-run ministry of interior in the Gaza Strip will appoint a committee to investigate clashes June 6 between police and suspected drug dealers in Beit Lahiya. The committee will be headed by Hamas-affiliated lawmaker Ismail al-Ashqar, who is in charge of a security and interior committee of the Palestinian Legislative Council in the Gaza Strip. The ministry explained in a statement that a man who was shot dead in the morning in Beit Lahiya was trying to mediate between police officers and the suspects. Muhammad Salman Abu Sittah was hit, according to the ministry, by a gunshot from the direction of the house where the suspects were hiding. The statement described Abu Sittah as "a martyr who fell trying to reconcile between rivals” and asserted that his death would not be in vain. “The killer will be identified and will receive proper punishment."

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.