Cindy Sheehan, mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, was among several US citizens who arrived in Cuba on Jan. 6 in preparation for a series of actions Jan. 9-13 to protest the US military's use of its Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba to detain Muslim men captured as alleged "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror." The rest of the delegation is scheduled to arrive on Jan. 9 for a press conference that day in Havana, followed by a Jan. 10 conference in the Cuban city of Guantanamo on prison conditions and international law.

On Dec. 29 Chilean judge Haroldo Brito sentenced 13 former security agents to prison terms ranging from five to 18 years for four revenge murders carried out after a September 1986 attempt to kill Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990. Alvaro Corbalan Castilla, the former operations chief of the National Information Center (CNI), received the heaviest sentence, 18 years; he is already serving a 15-year sentence in the 1987 "Operation Albania" murder case. The defendants are expected to appeal the sentences.

Paraguayan general Alejandro Fretes Davalos, who led the imprisonment and torture of hundreds of people under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), died on Dec. 29 following a lengthy illness. Fretes had graduated from Chile's Military School, where he served under Augusto Pinochet before Pinochet seized power. Fretes also trained at the US Army School of the Americas in Panama in 1956 while still a major, taking the "Field Grade Officer" course.

On the night of Jan. 1, an armed group entered the village of El Cedro in Yarumal municipality, in the Colombian department of Antioquia, and shot to death four civilians, two men and two women. The victims included Yolanda Munoz Herrera, vice president of El Cedro's Community Action Board, and Jose Argemiro Mora Zapata, who was the Community Action Board's president and managed a local radio station in the village.

Unknown Somali fighters opened fire with automatic weapons and launched rockets at Ethiopian and allied Somalian troops in Mogadishu Jan. 9. The attack came as the troops had established themselves in a building formerly used by the police force. No casualties have yet been reported, but the gunfight lasted several minutes, and was the second attack targeting Ethiopian troops in Somalia's capital in the past three days. Somalia's Ethiopia-backed interim government has postponed plans to disarm the public for the moment, but pledges to carry them out—by force if necessary. (Garowe Online, Somalia, Jan. 9)

From the Arab American Community Coalition, Jan. 1:

The Arab American Community Coalition has just learned of an entire Palestinian family - the Ibrahims - being held in jail in Texas while waiting an unjustified deportation. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) grabbed the family of five in a Gestapo-like raid on November 3, 2006.

On Jan. 2, a California National Guard helicopter assisting the Border Patrol crashed in the mountains about 20 miles southeast of downtown San Diego. Two National Guard soldiers and three Border Patrol agents were hospitalized with neck and back injuries; another two Border Patrol agents and two Guard members survived the crash unhurt. On Jan. 3, officials grounded the remaining six Guard helicopters doing border duty, including one UH-1 Huey and five OH-58 observation craft. The chopper that crashed was a 1973 Huey transport helicopter; Col. Mitchell Medigovich, an aviation expert who is leading the California National Guard's investigation into the crash, said it was one of six Hueys left over from the Vietnam war era still flown by the state Guard. (AP, Jan. 3)

On Dec. 5, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of an immigrant deported for a first-time drug conviction in South Dakota. "Conduct that is a felony under state law but a misdemeanor under the Controlled Substances Act is not a felony for purposes of immigration," stated the majority opinion by Justice David Souter in the case, Lopez v. Gonzales, 05-7664. Jose Antonio Lopez became a lawful permanent resident in 1990; in 1997 he pled guilty to state charges of aiding and abetting possession of drugs for having told someone where to obtain cocaine. He served 15 months in prison for the crime, which is a felony in South Dakota but a misdemeanor under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Treating a misdemeanor under the federal law as a felony for deportation purposes "would be so much trickery," Souter wrote. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.