Mexico City
Election results disputed: Enrique Peña Nieto is facing court challenges to his victory in last week’s presidential election. Leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that he lost by 6.6 percentage points because the Peña Nieto campaign bought votes and exceeded campaign-spending limits. Thousands of voters were given prepaid gift cards ahead of the vote, and some government officials are suspected of shifting state funds to Peña Nieto. The issue goes to the heart of Peña Nieto’s presidency, set to begin on Dec. 1: He campaigned on a promise that his PRI party, which repressively governed Mexico for decades before 2000, had renounced corruption and vote buying.
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
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Bin Laden driver released: A former al Qaida driver and cook, one of the longest-serving prisoners in Guantánamo, was released this week to his native Sudan. Ibrahim al-Qosi, 52, was an accountant for one of Osama bin Laden’s businesses in Sudan before following the terrorist leader to Afghanistan, where he worked as a driver and cook. He was captured fleeing the U.S. assault on Tora Bora in 2001 and was one of the first prisoners to be sent to Guantánamo, in early 2002. Al-Qosi was also one of the first to allege that he had been tortured. He was convicted in 2010 after pleading guilty to terror charges, in a deal that allowed his release after two more years. Another 168 prisoners remain in Guantánamo.
Buenos Aires
Stealing babies: The surviving two of Argentina’s four military dictators were convicted last week of overseeing the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners. Jorge Videla, known as el Flaco, or the Skinny One, got 50 years in prison, and Reynaldo Bignone got 15 years. Both are already serving life sentences for the torture and murder of tens of thousands of dissidents committed when the military ruled the country, from 1976 to 1983. At least 400 babies were taken from their mothers just after birth—the mothers were shot or hurled alive from helicopters into the ocean—and raised by families affiliated with the military. Some children were raised by the very soldiers who killed their parents.
