Globe Trot: Long-delayed conviction in Bangladesh war crimes trial

The 90-year-old head of Pakistan’s largest Islamist party has been found guilty of war crimes by a special tribunal in Bangladesh. The tribunal found Ghulam Azam, now the party’s spiritual leader, guilty today for crimes associated with Bangladesh’s war with Pakistan in 1971, and—comparing him to Adolf Hitler—sentenced him to 90 years in jail. The verdict sparked demonstrations and violence, but may not lead to actual jail time, as the court is not officially sanctioned by the U.N. or other international bodies.

It was an awful week for Al Jazeera in the aftermath of former President Mohamed Morsi’s ouster in Egypt. Long considered a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptians turned on the network in the wake of anti-Morsi protests, and the military raided its Cairo offices at least twice and took it off the air. Some Egyptians are petitioning the new government to revoke the Arab network’s license.

Accounts of Friday’s session in the Moscow airport with fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden remain conflicted, as do accounts of his current status (imagine casting your life into the hands of Vladimir Putin). “Snowden looked pale and nervous about his safety,” said Sergei Nikitin, the director of Amnesty International’s Moscow office, after meeting with him. International human rights groups, however, were far outnumbered in the meeting by Kremlin-affiliated agencies, and three of the groups represented actually have had their offices raided by Moscow counterparts at the meeting: “The Russian propaganda machine has not gotten this much mileage out of a U.S. citizen since Angela Davis’s murder trial in 1971.”

Focus on the hunt for Snowden has detracted from the value of stolen U.S. documents he has, according to Glenn Greenwald. Snowden possesses enough information to cause more damage to the U.S. government than “anyone else has ever had in the history” of the country, Greenwald, the lawyer-reporter who first broke the Snowden story, told an Argentinian paper.

A car bomb north of Damascus has killed at least 13 Syrians, including policemen, on Day 853 of Syria’s civil war. For a timeline and latest headlines on the conflict, Syria Deeply is a new resource worth checking out.

We’re following: The ADF attack over the weekend at the Congo-Uganda border that has forced 65,000 Congolese to flee to Uganda. The resurgence by the Muslim-led militant group has sent the Ugandan army to the border in force, and directly affects the work of World Harvest Mission and Ugandan workers in Bundibugyo (profiled during the last round of fighting here).

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith is flying off store shelves now that readers have discovered the author is actually J. K. Rowling.