The US has threatened to withhold intelligence cooperation with the UK if evidence is made public of the torture of a British resident at Guantánamo Bay, Britain's High Court asserted in a ruling Feb. 4. Details in the case must remain secret, judges ruled—explicitly citing US threats. Lord Justice Thomas and Justice Lloyd Jones said lawyers for the Foreign Secretary David Miliband had told them that the threat by the US still applied under President Barack Obama's administration. While noting that failure to release the evidence is contrary to the rule of law, the judges said it must remain secret or "the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk."

The UN's special torture rapporteur called on the administration of Barack Obama to prosecute former president George W. Bush and his defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and ill-treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. "Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation" to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld, Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said in remarks to Germany's ZDF TV.

Pope Benedict Jan. 24 rehabilitated a breakaway "traditionalist" bishop who denies the Holocaust—ignoring warnings from Jewish leaders that it would seriously harm relations with the Catholic church and foment anti-Semitism. The Vatican said the pope issued a decree lifting the 1988 excommunication of four traditionalist bishops for being ordained by the late "traditionalist" Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without Vatican consent. The four bishops lead the ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which has about 600,000 members and rejected modernizations of Roman Catholic worship and doctrine. The Vatican said the excommunications were lifted after the bishops affirmed their acceptance of Church doctrine and papal authority.

Fox News is having a field day with reports that a Saudi man who was released from Guantánamo Bay after a six-year stint has joined al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen and is now said to be the terror network's number-two in the country. The announcement, made this week on an Islamist militant website, comes as President Barack Obama ordered the detention facility closed within a year.

Saying that "our ideals give us the strength and moral high ground" to fight terrorism, President Barack Obama signed executive orders Jan. 22 ending the CIA's secret overseas prisons, banning coercive interrogation methods, and closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year.

Hours after taking the oath of office, President Barack Obama called for a halt to the Guantánamo tribunals, directing military prosecutors to seek a 120-day "continuance" (legalese for postponement) in proceedings underway at the prison camp against five accused 9-11 co-conspirators, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The US Department of Defense Jan. 18 announced it had transferred six detainees out of Guantánamo Bay. The detainees, four of whom were sent to Iraq, one to Algeria, and one to Afghanistan, were found to be eligible for transfer after what the DoD called "a comprehensive series of review processes." About 245 detainees remain at the facility, with roughly 60 eligible for transfer or release. The Afghan who was transferred, named Bismullah, was cleared of enemy combatant status "based on new information." The other five retained the enemy combatant designation.

Mohammed el Gharani, 21, of Chad, held for seven years at the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, was ordered released Jan. 14 by federal district Judge Richard Leon (Washington DC), who found that the government had not proven that Mohammed el-Gharani was an "enemy combatant." "The government's evidence was a mosaic of allegations" Leon said in his ruling, calling the claims against el-Gharani "murky." He ordered that el-Gharani be released soon either to Saudi Arabia, where he was raised and his family lives, or Chad. (Reuters, Jan. 14)