Within days of taking office in January 2009, President Barack Obama issued executive orders that repudiated key elements of the Bush administration's abusive approach to fighting terrorism. By changing course in such a swift and high-profile way, President Obama appeared to signal a new and reformed counterterrorism policy, one consistent with basic US values and with international law. But in the months that followed this promising start, the administration chose to retain a number of the previous administration's most problematic policies, albeit in modified form.

An Italian court’s conviction of 23 agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for kidnapping is an historic repudiation of the CIA’s crimes. The Milan court also found that two Italian officials illegally collaborated in CIA abuses.

The verdict expected Wednesday in a landmark case may present a historic legal challenge to the US Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) rendition program.

The award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama should encourage him to apply his stated principles to both foreign and domestic human rights policy.

The possibility that the Justice Department might investigate the use of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees is encouraging and important. The United States cannot truly claim to have repudiated these egregious human rights violations unless it returns to the day when it treated them as crimes rather than as policy options.

The US Department of Justice should open a criminal investigation into post-9/11 interrogation practices.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, US officials approved various interrogation methods that were illegal under both US and international law. Yet no senior official has been held accountable for these crimes. Some have expressed objections to the prosecution of US government officials for their role in abusive interrogation methods and to the creation of commission of inquiry. We address those objections here.

The Libyan authorities should carry out a full and transparent investigation of the reported suicide of the Libyan prisoner Ali Mohamed al-Fakheri, also known as Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. Al-Libi, who was held in secret US and Egyptian detention from late 2001 to at least 2005, was found dead in his cell in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.