Police dismantle network:

Lat/Am

After an eight-month investigation, Rio police this week dismantled a network that had provided 72 Syrian immigrants with fake Brazilian identification documents, news reports said Wednesday.

The network had provided the Syrians with birth certificates, identity cards, voters’ cards and passports, according to the government news agency Brasil.

The group was headed by a 71-year-old Syrian with a permanent visa in Brazil, Ali Kamel Issmael.

With the complicity of two civil-registry officials in Rio de Janeiro, the network ripped out pages from birth registries of the 1960s and 1970s and replaced them with new identities, the news agency said. (AFP)

Costa Rica wins territory row:

Costa Rica won a lingering, bitter territorial row with Nicaragua Wednesday when a top UN court ruled it had sovereignty over a small patch of wetlands on the river San Juan.

The court “finds that Costa Rica has sovereignty over the disputed territory as defined by the court,” the judges from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled, in a statement read to the hearing.

Basing its ruling in part on an 1858 treaty between the two countries, the court also reproached Managua for violating San Jose’s right to navigation in the waters which form their joint border.

By “excavating” three channels in the river and “establishing a military presence on Costa Rican territory, Nicaragua has violated the territory and sovereignty” of its neighbour, the 16-judge panel found. (AFP)

SC ‘absolves’ army colonel:

Colombia’s Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out the conviction of an outspoken army colonel who had been found guilty of forcibly “disappearing” several people taken alive during a 1985 army raid on the high court after it was seized by guerrillas.

On a 5-3 vote, justices ruled there wasn’t sufficient evidence that now retired Col Alfonso Plazas was responsible for the disappearance of two people — a rebel and a cafeteria worker — who were escorted alive from the building during the 48-hour standoff and never seen again.

President Juan Manuel Santos this year apologized for the deadly siege in compli-