The US Supreme Court unanimously decided that foreign political organizations and multinational corporations cannot be sued for the torture or extrajudicial killing of persons abroad under an anti-torture law passed in 1992. The law only gives people the right to sue “an individual,” “who acted under the authority of a foreign nation.”

In her exhaustively researched new book, Larissa Tracy, an associate professor of medieval literature at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, says linking “medieval” with acts of torture is a fallacy.

“Torture was not a pervasive means of medieval judicial control, despite accounts of public brutality and secular punishment …,” Tracy wrote in the introduction to “Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature,” which cites the “Getting Medieval” scene from “Pulp Fiction” as a way of explaining how our understanding of the medieval era has been misguided.

The Guardian highlights the rendition and torture of a Libyan militant, who led the fight against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and his pregnant wife. Part 1 highlighted details surrounding the rendition of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife, Fatima Bouchar. Now, Part 2 focuses on how the US could potentially interfere with their attempt to bring British intelligence agents to justice and expose the CIA’s role.

A new report published by the United Kingdom-based news organization The Guardian highlights the rendition and torture of a Libyan militant, who led the fight against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and his pregnant wife. This is part I, covering the couple’s capture, mistreatment and rendition by US and UK personnel.

Last summer, the King of Bahrain funded the “independent” Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry to review human rights issues in the country. The report was praised by the King’s American friends – and presented as justification for continued American support of the monarchy.

A group of news organizations that include the New York Times, the Washington Post and the McClatchy Co. has filed an objection to the Pentagon’s plan to close an upcoming hearing in the case of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who is alleged to have been involved in masterminding an attack on the USS Cole in 2000 which killed seventeen US sailors.

As McClatchy reports, “Al-Nashiri is expected to testify” at an upcoming hearing on April 11 because his attorneys are going to argue before a military commission at Guantanamo that their client should not be “shackled to the floor” when he testifies because that is likely to remind him of “trauma that he suffered in CIA custody.” The testimony is to be given “behind closed doors” to protect “sensitive information” from being revealed.

Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, leading Bahraini human rights defender, and father of Zeinab who tweets at @AngryArabiya whose reports we’ve followed closely in the past, is feared close to death as he enters the 56th day of a hungerstrike inside Bahrain’s prisons.

A State Department internal memo opposing the Justice Department’s arguments for CIA “enhanced interrogation techniques”—torture—has been released. The memo from February 2006 was written by Philip Zelikow, then counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It was believed that all copies of the memo had been destroyed, but on April 3, the National Security Archive, obtained a copy through a FOIA request and posted it online.

Three Afghanis and three Iraqis allegedly tortured by the US military at detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan are proceeding with their case despite having the their case dismissed and upheld by an appeals court in November of last year. The ACLU is petitioning an international court set up by the Organization of American States to pursue their claims.

As part of a follow-up from the CIA’s destruction of torture videotapes, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been working to force the CIA to release cables that describe how the agency used waterboarding. The asserts the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit should not induce the release of documents because waterboarding involves “intelligence methods” that should not be revealed. But, the ACLU disputes that argument and points out waterboarding is illegal so the cables should not be protected from release.