The US Supreme Court on Oct. 20 agreed to hear Kiyemba v. Obama, in which the court will consider whether a group of 13 Uighur detainees at Guantánamo Bay can be released into the US. In February, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed an October 2008 district court order that would have provided for their release.

In case after case since 9-11, the feds have have created specious terror scares by recruiting marginal wing-nuts for fictitious conspiracies through the use infiltrators (read: provocateurs) posing as al-Qaeda operatives—and the media have utterly failed to challenge this unscrupulous entrapment. Now exactly the same tactic has been used against a veteran technician at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the Energy Department's Livermore Labs who is accused of "espionage"—even though the guy who lured him to pass on information was himself a federal agent! And the foreign government in this pseudo-plot wasn't Iran or North Korea, but our supposed ally Israel. From Bloomberg, Oct. 19:

A two-judge panel of the UK's High Court ruled Oct. 16 that US intelligence documents containing details pertinent to torture allegations by a former detainee at Guantánamo Bay should be made public. The former detainee, Binyam Mohamed, 31, says Britain's domestic intelligence agency, MI5, knew he was being tortured when it worked with the CIA on his case after he was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and taken to a prison in Morocco. The Foreign Office said it would appeal the ruling, delaying any release. Mohamed, who was born in Ethiopia, was flown to London in February from Guantánamo on the grounds that he was a legal resident in Britain before leaving for Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. (NYT, Oct. 16)

The US Department of Justice announced Oct. 9 that Kuwaiti Guantánamo Bay detainee Khaled al-Mutairi has been returned to his home country. The US government alleged that al-Mutairi had fought against American troops in Afghanistan, but in his almost eight years at the facility, no charges were ever filed. Al-Mutairi maintains that he had traveled to Afghanistan to provide monetary support for schools. In his home country, al-Mutairi will participate in a rehabilitation program set up by the Kuwaiti government, designed to help former Guantánamo detainees recover and reintegrate into civilian life. The DoJ also announced that a second detainee, whose identity has not been released, was released to Belgium. Al-Mutairi's release leaves 222 detainees who must be dealt with before the Obama administration's goal of closing the facility can be realized.

Human rights group Reprieve announced July 28 that it is suing the British government over the 2002 "rendition" of Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni from Indonesia to Egypt. The group alleges that the UK allowed the US rendition flight of Madni to stop on the British island territory of Diego Garcia, where the Pentagon has an air base. Madni says he was tortured with cattle prods for three months in Egypt, then sent to Guantánamo Bay, where he was held for six years before being released last August without having been charged.

Members of Congress July 13 called for an investigation into a secret CIA program designed to kill al-Qaeda members. The call follows the recently publicized information that former vice-president Dick Cheney directly ordered the CIA to withhold information about the program from Congress and kept it secret for eight years.

Four Uighurs from Guantánamo Bay have been released in Bermuda where they hailed their new freedom—but the United Kingdom reproached its overseas territory, saying it should have been consulted on the move. US authorities ignored demands by China for custody of the men, who had served seven years at Guantánamo, flying them June 11 to Bermuda, which accepted them in a guest-worker program. "Growing up under communism, we always dreamed of living in peace and working in free society like this one," Abdul Nasser, speaking on behalf of the four, said in a statement released by their lawyers. Speaking to the people of Bermuda, the statement added: "Today you have let freedom ring."

James W. Von Brunn, the elderly man suspected of killing a security guard in Washington DC's Holocaust Museum June 10 is a World War II veteran with links to white supremacist groups who tried nearly 30 years ago to take Federal Reserve board members hostage, according to media reports and Web sites. A Web site maintained by Von Brunn says that in 1981 he tried to carry out a "citizens arrest" on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. (The website, Holy Western Empire, appears to be currently disabled.)