Amnesty International on June 7 urged European leaders to stop the upcoming deportation of asylum seekers to Iraq because their human rights may be violated in unsafe regions of the country. Authorities in the UK, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands are taking part in a joint effort to return the refugees to Iraq after the asylum petitions of many of the refugees were denied. Amnesty contends that the planned deportations violate the rules of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which oppose forced returns to specific areas in Iraq considered too dangerous for civilians. The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR) also condemned the return of refugees to high-risk areas in Iraq, alleging that more than 100 Iraqi refugees in the UK will be deported this week.

The US Navy announced June 7 that it will appeal an appeals court ruling overturning the conviction of US Marine Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III. Hutchins, who was convicted in 2007 for the 2006 kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi civilian in Hamdania, remains in the brig at Camp Pendleton while the Navy appeals to the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. Hutchins' defense attorney Marine Capt. Babu Kaza has described the appeal as without merit, and has called it politically motivated. The appeal comes despite a recommendation to the contrary by a legal adviser that it would not likely yield a different result. If the appeal fails, the case would be returned to Camp Pendleton where a general will decide whether to retry the case.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8 denied a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Guantánamo Bay detainee Adham Mohammed Ali Awad, allowing for continued incarceration of the Yemeni national by the US government. A three-judge panel unanimously upheld the district court's decision, which referred to Awad's role in armed conflict as "gossamer thin," but still denied the detainee's request for relief from indefinite incarceration.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on June 2 pardoned or commuted the sentences of 81 protesters arrested following last year's disputed presidential election. The pardons were made on request of the head of the Supreme Judicial System of Iran, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, who described the pardoned protesters as repentant. They were announced the same day that defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi applied for permission to hold demonstrations marking the one-year anniversary of the elections. Pardons are common occurrences on national religious observances in Iran; June 2 marked the birth of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, a revered figure in Shi'a Islam.

A top UN official on June 2 called on the US to cease CIA drone strikes in Pakistan until more accountability for the strikes exists. UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston said that, despite their usefulness against terrorist organizations, the international community is kept uninformed of when and where drone attacks are authorized, allowing the CIA to conduct strikes virtually anywhere in the world without having to answer for its actions.

The UN Security Council on June 1 called for a "prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation" into the previous day's raid by Israeli commandos on an aid flotilla bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip in which 10 civilians on a Turkish ship were killed. Reaffirming two earlier resolutions calling for a two-state solution (Resolution 1850) and unimpeded humanitarian assistance (Resolution 1860), the Council urged Israel to allow other nations to retrieve their wounded and deceased and to ensure delivery of the aid materials aboard the ships.

Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled May 25 that the cleric accused by India of plotting the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks cannot be imprisoned due to lack of evidence. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is the head of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which was allegedly behind the attacks. Pakistan put Saeed under virtual house arrest one month after the onslaught, where he remained except for a three-month period last summer, but the Lahore High Court ordered his release in October. The Supreme Court's ruling could strain the already fragile relationship between India and Pakistan, which recently started peace talks.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled May 21 in al-Maqaleh v. Gates that detainees held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan cannot bring habeas corpus challenges in US courts. The circuit court reversed the district court's ruling, which allowed habeas challenges by three Bagram detainees pursuant to the Supreme Court's test in Boumediene v. Bush. Chief Judge David B. Sentelle, delivering the opinion of the three-judge panel, stated that the district court underestimated the significance of Bagram being located in an area of armed conflict, which differentiates the defendants' jurisdictional status from those detained at Guantánamo Bay. The court held that the current case is more comparable to 1950's Johnson v. Eisentrager, where the Supreme Court ruled that US courts had no jurisdiction over war criminals held in a US-administered German prison.