Ottawa
U.S. deserter wins reprieve: A Canadian court has ordered Canada’s Immigration Board to reconsider a U.S. Army deserter’s bid for asylum. The Federal Court ruled that military action against civilians in Iraq was a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and that any U.S. soldier who refused to condone such human-rights abuses might qualify for asylum in Canada. Joshua Key was an Army private who deserted in 2003, saying he would no longer participate in violent invasions of civilian homes. The court ruled that even though the “military misconduct” that Key objected to was not a war crime, he could be entitled to refugee status. The ruling could affect dozens of American deserters who have fled to Canada.
Tijuana, Mexico
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Drug murders soar: Tijuana police found 11 bodies over a three-day period this week, the latest casualties in a feud among drug lords. Some of the bodies were burned, probably after death, while several victims were smothered, their heads wrapped in plastic. The killings brought the city’s murder count so far this year to 260, compared with 150 at this time last year. The organized-crime groups that control the drug trade are particularly active in Tijuana, a border town that sees huge volumes of drug traffic. President Felipe Calderón sent the military to the city more than a year ago in an effort to stamp out the drug trade.
Havana
Castro opposes kidnapping: Cuban ex-president Fidel Castro has
called on the FARC rebel group in Colombia to release all of its remaining hostages. “I have openly and energetically criticized the objectively cruel methods of kidnapping and holding prisoners in the jungle,” Castro wrote in an article posted on a Cuban website a few days after the Colombian Army last week rescued French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages. At the same time, though, Castro said he was not advocating that the FARC lay down its arms or abandon its revolutionary goals. The Colombian group, listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Colombia, has long held up Castro as an inspiration. It continues to hold several hundred hostages.
Puerto Montt, Chile
Nazi hunters in town: A Jewish human-rights group sent representatives to Chile this week to search for fugitive Nazi Aribert Heim. Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s pre-eminent Nazi hunter, is heading a team that plans to scour the Chilean city of Puerto Montt, where the former SS doctor’s daughter lives. The group will also look in the Argentine resort city of Bariloche. Zuroff said the expedition was probably the group’s last attempt to find Heim. “We feel we are approaching the end of the line,” Zuroff said. Heim, who would be 94 if he is still alive, was known as “Dr. Death” for his sadism. At the Mauthausen concentration camp, he was notorious for removing organs without anesthetic and for injecting prisoners with painful toxins.
