"Unconditional surrender now!" demands Colombia
Colombia's city streets bustled with more than a million protestors yesterday, as people gathered throughout the country to demand the immediate release of thousands of people held captive by leftist guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A march staged in the capital, Bogotá, was led by President Alvaro Uribe, who wore a T-shirt carrying the slogan "Unconditional freedom now!".
East Timor's stability rests on election results
East Timor's ruling Fretilin party has taken the lead in the country's parliamentary elections. It is considerably short of a overall majority and will therefore need to enter into a coalition, yet party head Mari Alkatiri has refused to deal with independence leader Xanana Gusmao. The state is in desperate need of good governance in order to tackle gang violence and rampant poverty in the country.
Meanwhile, Gusmao's CNRT party has announced that it has formed an alliance with the Democratic Party and the Association of Timorese Democrats-Social Democratic Party (ASDT-PSD) "for the stability of the country". Combined, the parties hold 51 percent of the vote.
Crackdown on ill-monitored banking in Abkhazia
Georgia is to call on foreign banks not to cooperate with, nor open accounts for, Russian firms and individuals operating in the territories of Abkhazia, a breakaway region in the country. Transactions in the territory are not controlled, and also "contradict international law covering money-laundering and the financing of terrorism", the chief spokesperson for Georgia's central bank has said.
Georgia's military plans reveal its ambition to reclaim the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia it lost in the wars of the early 1990s, says Vicken Cheterian on openDemocracy.
Assassination plot against Musharraf?
Questions were being asked today as to whether there had been an attempted assassination of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, after police recovered a 7.62mm machinegun and a 12.7mm anti-aircraft gun from a rooftop near a military air base in Rawalpindi. Intelligence officials have said that gunshots were heard near the base as Musharraf's plane took off, yet military spokesperson Major General Waheed Arshad has refuted this claim.
Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy leader of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, has said that those holed-up in the besieged compound are ready for martyrdom: "we are ready for our heads to be cut off, but we will not bow to them", he exclaimed on Friday. An earlier petition by Ghazi for clemency was rejected by the Pakistani security forces.
The conflict over a radical mosque in Islamabad has a direct political connection to the region's military insecurity, writes Paul Richards on openDemocracy.
Decentralised combat strategy in Iraq
An alliance forged between US soldiers and local Sunni residents, known as the Local Committee, "is the only way that we can keep Al Qaeda [in Mesopotamia] out" in the Diyala province, notes Captain Ben Richards. The New York Times discusses this new breed of "decentralized strategy", steeped in "hard-headed calculations", that troops in Iraq are using to defeat Sunni jihadists and Shiite militias in the beleaguered state.
A US attorney has said that a former US Army private charged with taking part in the gang rape of an Iraqi girl, and the subsequent murder of her and her father, mother and six-year-old sister, should face the death penalty if he is found guilty. He is being tried as a civilian, after his military discharge in 2006. Three other soldiers involved in the case have been court-martialed, while a fourth awaits a military trial.
Senator Pete V. Domenici, a significant player in the Republican National Committee (GOP), and hitherto staunch war supporter, has called for an immediate change in US strategy in Iraq, one "that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home". While he does not support immediate withdrawal of troops nor funding reductions, this sends a clear signal to the White House that GOP patience is ebbing.
Israeli blockade radicalises Gazans
National human rights organisation, Gisha, has said that Israel's blockade of Gaza is only exacerbating the poverty and dependency of the people there, thus encouraging further radicalisation. During the last three weeks, some 75% of factories have closed down in Gaza, owing to an inability to either import raw materials or export finished products. This has left many families reliant on food aid.
Yemeni activist arrested on fabricated charges
A prominent Yemeni journalist and activist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani was arrested last week on seemingly fabricated terrorist charges, amid what Worldpress.org describes as, "part of a broader governmental campaign to clamp down not only on dissent, but also on information". Al-Khaiwani is said to have been miss-treated during his arrest, having been struck repeatedly with the arresting officers' guns.
Formal executions return to Somalia
Two Islamist insurgents convicted of the murder of the deputy district commissioner of Mogadishu's Horuwa district, Osman Ali, who was gunned down on Monday, have been executed in Somalia. These are the first formal executions since late 2004.
Five children were killed on Friday, when a landmine exploded in a livestock market in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, wounding at least 10 others.
Extradition request for genocide suspect
Kigali has called for the extradition of French passport-holder Isaac Kamali, accused of involvement in the Rwandan genocide. He is currently in custody in France. Rwanda severed diplomatic ties with Paris in November, after a French magistrate called for President Paul Kagame to face prosecution over the killing of a former president.
Parents of kidnapped Briton threatened
The kidnappers of the three-year-old British girl kidnapped in Nigeria yesterday, have told the family that unless her father, oil worker Mike Hill, takes the place of the child, then the child will be killed. Margaret Hill was snatched from a car in busy traffic in Port Harcourt, in the south of the country. Kidnappings are common in the region, where many foreign oil workers are based.
London bomb suspects explored US jobs
Two of the seven doctors arrested in Britain last week over their suspected role in the failed bomb attacks had made inquiries at a Philadelphia-based organisation, into the possibility of applying for graduate medical-education programs in the US. One of the men was neurologist Mohammed Jamil Asha, 26, a Jordanian who was born in Saudi Arabia and is of Palestinian descent.
Police in Australia have questioned five more doctors and seized new evidence in connection with last week's failed car bomb attacks in the UK. Authorities have also been granted more time to question a relative of one those arrested in Britain.
