The Basque separatist ETA has announced a permanent ceasefire after nearly 40 years and some 800 killings. Now, as this report from IOL notes, legal proceedings against accused ETA collaborators may be reconsidered. Note that Arnaldo Otegi faces prison time for, among other things, "defending terrorism by praising dead ETA members." As with the recent "anti-terrorism" legislation in the UK that criminalizes free speech, we see that "the West" betrays the very values it is supposedly defending in the War on Terrorism. And, of course, just as the war between ETA and the Spanish state is winding down, the war between al-Qaeda and the Spanish state may be just beginning...

From AP, March 22:

ROME — Italian police said Tuesday they have arrested five people suspected in the killing of a local politician who was shot last year at a polling station in southern Italy where he was voting in a nationwide primary.

From Reuters:

QUETTA, Pakistan, March 23 - A bomb blew up a telephone call office in Pakistan's troubled Baluchistan province on Thursday, killing the owner and wounding eight other people, police said.

From Pakistan's daily Dawn:

WANA, March 22: A pro-government cleric was killed by gunmen in the Laddah subdivision of the South Waziristan Agency on Wednesday and a telephone exchange was blown up in the Shakai area. Witnesses told Dawn that the car of the pro-government cleric, Maulana Sibghatullah, was ambushed at Laddah, about 70 km south of here. The attackers, who were masked, killed Maulana Sibghatullah and took away with them three other people who were in the car.

From Reuters, via Khajeel Times, March 21:

QUETTA, Pakistan - Suspected militants blew up a gas pipeline in Baluchistan on Tuesday, the latest attack in the troubled southwest Pakistan province where rebels are fighting for greater autonomy, officials said.

From Reuters, March 21:

President George W. Bush held out the possibility on Tuesday of a U.S. troop presence in Iraq for many years, saying a full withdrawal would depend on decisions by future U.S. presidents and Iraqi governments.

Another expendable piece of cannon fodder is scapegoated...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Army dog handler was found guilty on Tuesday of abusing detainees at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison and faces up to eight years and nine months in prison, an Army spokeswoman said.

Freedom's on the march. From the BBC, March 20:

An Afghan man is being tried in a court in the capital, Kabul, for converting from Islam to Christianity.