The Italian Court of Cassation on Sept. 19 upheld the convictions of 23 former CIA officers for the 2003 kidnapping and rendition of Egyptian terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr. Former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady was originally sentenced to eight years in prison, while 22 other Americans were sentenced to five years after they were all tried in absentia. In 2010 an Italian intermediate appellate court increased Lady's sentence to nine years while increasing the sentences of the other 22 defendants to seven years. The Court of Cassation upheld the sentences of nine and seven years.

Seven police officers in Bahrain have been charged with torturing and mistreating medical professionals who were detained during opposition protests held in March 2011, authorities said Sept. 17. The police officers were trying to coerce the medical professionals into confessing that they committed misdemeanor assault and slander. The police officers' trial is scheduled to start on Oct. 1. The two police officers who are accused of committing the most serious infractions will be tried in the High Criminal Court, while the others will be tried in the Lower Criminal Court. Ten other officers remain under investigation.

An Omani blogger was sentenced to one year of imprisonment by a Muscat court on Sept. 16 and must pay a fine of 1,000 Omani Rials ($2,600). The blogger, Mukhtar bin Mohammed bin Saif al-Hinai, was convicted on charges of slander and violating the country's information technology laws. Al-Hinai is employed by Azzaman newspaper, which has been under government scrutiny recently after publishing critical material. In the wake of the Arab Spring, authorities in Oman have been working to stifle dissent and criticism of the country's leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al-Said.

Yemeni Guantánamo Bay detainee Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif died over the weekend at a hospital on the US Navy base after guards found him unconscious in his cell Sept. 8. Latif's identification was originally withheld until the US military could notify his family and his home country's government. The guards who found Latif unconscious in his cell at the US detention facility performed first aid and brought him to a hospital on the US Navy base to perform extensive life saving measures. These were unsuccessful, and doctors at the hospital pronounced Latif dead. This marks the ninth detainee to have died in custody at Guantánamo.

Government officials from both the US and Afghanistan have said that the US military will maintain control over foreign detainees at Bagram Air Base for the indefinite future, and will also continue holding and screening newly captured Afghans. According to the New York Times, the US commitment to the control and maintenance of dozens of foreign prisoners comes despite preparing to hand over its detention operations to the Afghan government on Sept. 9, as agreed to in a pact in March in the prelude to the countries' Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement (text, PDF). Given that the March pact covered only the 3,100 Afghan detainees at the time of its enactment, there has been relative uncertainty as to the fate of the additional 600 detainees added to Bagram since the signing. While concerns of arbitrary detentions have been raised  by the Afghan government, namely that the agreement's no-trial detention system is contrary to Afghanistan's constitution (text, PDF), William Lietzau, the Pentagon's top detainee policy official, maintains that the system is lawful as long as the war continues. The Afghan government has refused to ratify the Bagram agreement.

During the administration of former US president George W. Bush, the US government tortured opponents of former Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi and transferred them to Libya, Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced in a report (PDF) released Sept. 5. The report, entitled "Delivered Into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi's Libya," details the ill-treatment and torture, including instances of waterboarding, of detainees in US custody. The information contained in the report comes from detainees who have since been liberated, as well as documents and files uncovered after the fall of the Qaddafi regime.

The US embassy in Guatemala  on Aug. 30 praised the decision of the Guatemalan Constitutional Court allowing former president Alfonso Portillo to be extradited to the US on charges of embezzling foreign donations. Upon extradition Portillo will stand trial in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges of laundering US$1.5 million in Taiwanese foreign donations, which were supposed to be used to buy schoolbooks for Guatemalan children. Instead Portillo allegedly deposited the funds in various banks for his personal use. Portillo was president from 2000 to 2004 and was tried last year in Guatemala on  charges of embezzlement  under which he allegedly diverted approximately USD $15 million in funds from the Ministry of Defense. His extradition to the US was approved by a Guatemalan criminal court in March 2010.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu on Sept. 1 called in an op-ed in The Observer for former US president George W. Bush and former UK prime minister Tony Blair to stand trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their roles in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Tutu argues that:

The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history. Instead of recognising that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart.