The US Supreme Court on May 18 ruled 5-4 in Ashcroft v. Iqbal that a complaint filed against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller and other officials failed to demonstrate an intentional pattern of discrimination. Pakistani national Javaid Iqbal, detained on an immigration violation in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, alleged mistreatment by the FBI based on religious and ethnic bias during his detention in a Brooklyn maximum security federal prison, and that Ashcroft and Meuller became complicit in the discrimination when they approved the policy that resulted in his detention.

US President Barack Obama announced May 15 that he is reinstating the controversial military commission system to try some Guantánamo Bay detainees. Obama said that there will be changes to the system to increase defendants' rights, including barring statements obtained under harsh interrogation methods and making it more difficult to introduce hearsay evidence. The administration will also seek a 90-day continuance of pending proceedings to implement the new rules, ask Congress to make changes to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to give defendants expanded rights.

US officials said May 15 that Algerian Guantánamo Bay detainee Lakhdar Boumediene has been released and sent to France. Boumediene was the named plaintiff in the US Supreme Court case Boumediene v. Bush , in which the Court held that Guantanamo detainees could challenge their imprisonment in federal court through the use of habeas corpus motions.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay in a May 14 New York Times op-ed, urged the US to hold accountable those accused of committing torture under the Bush administration. Pillay welcomed the US as a new member of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and lauded decisions by President Barack Obama to ban torture and close CIA prisons and to review detentions at Guantánamo Bay, but said that the US should hold accountable anyone who committed human rights abuses:

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said May 14 that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) misled Congress about the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques during the Bush administration. Pelosi, the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that CIA officials had explicitly said that they were not using the controversial waterboarding technique. Pelosi did concede that she had learned in 2003 that harsh techniques were being employed but defended her decision not to speak up over security concerns. Pelosi renewed calls for an independent "truth commission" to investigate alleged abuses committed during the Bush administration.

US President Barack Obama has decided to seek a delay of the release of photographs depicting abusive treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, reversing an earlier decision, White House officials said May 13. Last month, the Department of Justice agreed to release at least 44 photographs pursuant to a court order. The photos were scheduled to be released May 28. Obama reversed that decision after meeting last week with White house lawyers, citing concerns over retribution against US troops serving overseas. Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also wrote to Obama last week to urge him to fight the release of the photos.

US Nuremberg trials prosecutor Henry King Jr. died May 9 from cancer at the age of 89. King, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, was one of the last three surviving Nuremberg prosecutors, and at 29 was the youngest US prosecutor at Nuremberg at the time of the trials. King was later instrumental in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the new international tribunal that now prosecutes suspected war criminals.

An official for Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs May 7 confirmed the government's intention to appeal a Federal Court ruling directing Ottawa to firmly push for the repatriation of Canadian Guantánamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr. In a brief statement obtained by the Toronto Star, the official emphasized Prime Minister Stephen Harper's belief that the severity of the crimes allegedly committed by Khadr call for a judicial rather than a political process.