Authorities in Spain have launched proceedings to suspend the notorious investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzón. The ostensible reason for the move is his investigation into the fate of 114,000 people who disappeared during the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. The public prosecutor's office says Garzón had no authority to conduct the investigation because of a 1977 amnesty law. But Garzón says the disappearances must be considered crimes against humanity, and therefore not covered by any amnesty.

Four Guantánamo Bay detainees have been transferred to Albania and Spain, the US Department of Justice announced Feb. 24. Three detainees, Tunisia native Aleh Bin Hadi Asasi, Egypt native Sharif Fati Ali al Mishad, and Libya native Abdul Rauf Omar Mohammad Abu al Qusin, were transferred to Albania; the fourth, an unidentified detainee from the Palestinian territories, was transferred to Spain. The transfers, approved with unanimous consent by the Guantanamo Bay Task Force, add to the more than 580 Guantánamo detainees transferred to other nations since 2002. There are still 188 remaining at the Guantánamo facility in Cuba.

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Feb. 24 that the government can continue to hold indefinitely two Yemeni Guantánamo Bay detainees, even though the men had been cleared for release by the Bush administration two years ago. Judge Gladys Kessler denied the petitions for habeas corpus filed by Fahmi Salem Al-Assani and Suleiman Awadh Bin Agil Al-Nahdi. The men had been notified of their release in 2008, but the decision was suspended when President Barack Obama took office. Full text of the opinions explaining Kessler's reasoning will be made public after passing a security clearance. Nearly half the 188 prisoners remaining at Guantánamo are from Yemen.

B'nai Brith Canada released its 2009 "Audit of Antisemitic Incidents" this week. The survey reported over 1,200 incidents last year, an 11% increase over 2008 and a five-fold increase over the last decade. In total, there were 884 reports of harassment, 348 cases of vandalism and 32 cases of violence—twice as many as 2008.

Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel, flew to China Feb. 24 to urge Beijing to back sanctions against Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons project. Fischer, a former high official at the World Bank and IMF, was accompanied by Israel's minister for strategic affairs, Moshe Yaalon, and representatives of Israel's National Security Council. "They will discuss issues of common interest with the Chinese. This includes the Iranian issue, which is important for the Chinese as well as Israel," Yaalon's spokesman said.

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Feb. 23 in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, on whether a federal law that prohibits providing material support to terrorism violates the First Amendment. The challenge was filed by the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) on behalf on several groups that wanted to support Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), both of which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the US government.

Pakistani authorities are reported to have arrested nearly half of the Afghan Taliban's top leadership in recent days, in what is being portrayed as a crucial blow to the insurgent movement. In total, seven of the insurgent group's 15-member leadership council, thought to be based in Quetta, have been apprehended in the past week, unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials told the Christian Science Monitor.

Two human rights groups released documents Feb. 22 confirming that planes associated with the US Central Intelligence Agency's "extraordinary rendition" program landed in Poland on six occasions in 2003. The Open Society Justice Initiative and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights released flight records obtained through a freedom of information act request to the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency. Those records confirm at least six plane landings linked to the CIA at the Szczytno-Szymany airport in northern Poland between February and September 2003. The flights' origins included Afghanistan and Morocco.