The Obama administration on Sept. 24 filed a brief with the District Court for the District of Columbia, asking the court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the legality of targeted killings of terrorism suspects. The lawsuit, filed by the father of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi, seeks an injunction to prevent the government from killing al-Awlaqi on the basis that it would be an extrajudicial execution. The Obama administration argues that this matter involves "non-justiciable political questions" to be decided by the executive branch and that litigation could divulge state secrets.

Israel's interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla violated international law, according to a report released Sept. 22 by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). After conducting numerous interviews with eye-witnesses and viewing other evidence, the fact-finding mission determined that Israeli forces committed several international law violations, including violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Fourth Geneva Convention. The mission also determined that Israel's interception of the flotilla was prima facie unlawful. The report recommends judicial remedies and reparations, including medical and psychological care to those who were tortured.

The UN panel of experts tasked with monitoring and assessing investigations into alleged war crimes during the 2008-2009 conflict in the Gaza Strip issued a report Sept. 21 criticizing the investigations being carried out by both Israel and Hamas, but positively assessing the work of the Palestinian Authority. According to the report, the Palestinian Authority's work in this area comports with international standards. However the work of Israel is assessed more harshly:

A judge from Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court of Iran on Sept. 18 sentenced Shiva Nazar Ahari, a journalist arrested following the 2009 presidential election, to six years in prison. Ahari was sentenced to three-and-half-years for warring against God, known in Islamic law as moharebeh, two years for conspiracy to commit a crime and six months for propaganda against the government. In addition to the jail sentence, Ahari was also ordered to pay a $400 fine or face 74 lashes. Ahari's conviction on the charge of moharebeh could have resulted in the death penalty. Her lawyer has stated that he will appeal the sentence.

The US Department of Justice announced Sept. 17 that a US scientist and his wife have been indicted for conspiring to sell nuclear weapons information to an individual they believed worked for the Venezuelan government. Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni and his wife, Marjorie Mascheroni, were arrested that day by the FBI and appeared before the US District Court for the District of New Mexico. The defendants used to work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and possessed classified nuclear weapons knowledge. According to the indictment, between March 2008 and August 2009, Pedro Mascheroni, who is a naturalized US citizen, negotiated a deal with an undercover FBI agent he believed to be a Venezuelan official in which he would help the country develop a nuclear weapon in exchange for over $700,000. No actual members of the Venezuelan government have been charged in the case. If convicted, the couple faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Judges for the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City Sept. 17 upheld a verdict in favor of Royal Dutch Shell PLC in a case brought by families of Ogoni protesters who were executed by the Nigerian government in 1995, apparently in retaliation for speaking out against the oil company. The court ruled that the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) does not apply to corporations, relieving Shell of liability for alleged complicity in human rights abuses in Nigeria. The plaintiffs had accused Shell of enlisting Nigerian military forces to help stop protests in the country, resulting in the violation of human rights among the Ogoni people.

A Chinese prison on Sept. 9 released Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese human rights legal activist who has finished serving a four-year sentence for damaging property and "organizing a mob to disturb traffic." According to Human Rights Watch, the Chinese authorities have since placed Chen under house arrest and increased surveillance of his home and family, bringing into question the authenticity of his release. Family members allege that Chen suffers from health problems caused by mistreatment he received while in prison, including beatings and repeated food poisonings. Chen claims the charges were retribution for his documentation of forced sterilizations and abortions performed by Chinese officials to enforce China's one-child policy.

A Guatemalan judge ruled Sept. 8 that three soldiers charged in connection with a 1982 peasant massacre that left more than 260 dead will face trial. Of the 17 soldiers accused in the case, three were captured in Guatemala and four others have been detained in the US by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for illegally concealing their past military service and involvement in the killings on US immigration forms. The charges against the soldiers are based on the findings of a Truth Commission investigation monitored by the UN and completed in the late 1990s, which uncovered vast human rights abuses. The trials are the first for massacre crimes committed during the civil war years.