Human Rights Watch discovered in Tripoli tens of thousands of archived documents containing evidence of crimes – such as the US and UK governments’ complicity in torture – committed during Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s rule.

The US government should not forcibly return detainees to places where they fear ill-treatment without providing them a fair legal process to contest their repatriation. The Obama administration on January 6, 2011, transferred detainee Saeed Farhi bin Mohammed to his native Algeria despite his expressed fears of abuse in his homeland – the second forcible US return to that country in six months.

This submission highlights ten concerns regarding the United States’ compliance with its international human rights obligations, namely: racial discrimination in anti-drug laws, failure to house domestic violence victims, discriminatory and dangerous treatment of child farmworkers, unfair immigration detention policies, children sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, failure to test rape evidence, solitary confinement of mentally ill prisoners, inadequate healthcare for detained immigrant women, arbitrary detention and unfair trials of terrorism suspects, and return of persons to torture.

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.