Human Rights Watch (HRW) called March 29 for the US and Yemen to agree on a repatriation plan that provides "meaningful legal process" for the nearly 100 Yemeni detainees still at Guantánamo Bay. A new HRW report criticized any proposal involving indefinite suspension at a Yemeni facility and expressed fears of detainee mistreatment after repatriation.

Crusading Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón has asked prosecutors to investigate the US lawyers reportedly behind the establishment of the Guantánamo Bay detention center, Spanish media reported Saturday. Garzón's request comes after a criminal complaint was filed last week in the Audiencia Nacional against six lawyers from the administration of former US president George W. Bush, including David Addington, John Yoo, and former attorney general Alberto Gonzales.

A judge in the Southern District of New York March 27 ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to release reports on the destruction of 92 videotapes of terrorism suspect interrogations within the next 30 days or explain why it should not do so. Judge Alvin Hellerstein directed the CIA to disclose the reports along with a list of witnesses as part of the ongoing lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in an effort to access government materials on the interrogations under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

UK Attorney General Baroness Scotland said March 26 that police will conduct an investigation into claims that an agent of the country's MI5 intelligence service took part in the allegedly abusive interrogation of former Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed. Scotland said she determined the investigation was necessary after reviewing allegations that an MI5 agent gave US CIA agents questions that were asked of Mohammed during his alleged torture in Morocco. Mohamed, a native of Ethiopia who claims to have been transferred to Morocco for torture under a US program of extraordinary rendition, said he obtained the documents through the US legal process while seeking his release from Guantánamo Bay.

Having already dropped the "enemy combatant" nomenclature, the Barack Obama administration has now formally abandoned the Bush-era phrase "Global War on Terrorism." The new term is the dryly clinical and antiseptic "Overseas Contingency Operation." Is this an improvement—or a switch from a hubristic and bellicose rallying cry to an Orwellian euphemism? From the Washington Post, March 25:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) March 17 hailed a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit not to revisit an earlier decision requiring the Department of Defense (DoD) to disclose photographs of apparent detainee abuse. The Bush administration filed a request for rehearing in November in response to a Second Circuit ruling that the DoD must release the photographs of Iraqi and Afghan detainees after redacting personally identifying information.

The Irish Times notes March 14 that when former ambassador Chas Freeman was picked last month to chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC), few US newspapers reported the appointment. Freeman's withdrawal last week was front page news, however—because of his blistering parting shot at the "Israel Lobby" he claimed had brought him down. The case opens a window into the intra-elite paleo-neocon wars still playing themselves out in the Barack Obama administration.

On March 13, the Obama administration officially abandoned the term "enemy combatant." In a filing with the DC District Court, the Justice Department said that it will no longer use the term and asserted a new standard for the government's authority to hold detainees at Guantánamo Bay. The Obama administration is still claiming it has the authority to hold prisoners at Gitmo, but says it will now be based on authority from Congress and the international laws of war. The Bush administration claimed that the president could unilaterally hold prisoners without charge.