More than one thousand foreign nationals were arrested and detained in the USA in post-11 September sweeps, and a great many people were taken into US custody in Afghanistan and elsewhere outside the USA, some 300 of these had been transferred to the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba at the time of writing. It is these detentions in Afghanistan and Guantánamo that are the focus of this memorandum – which seeks to remind the US Government of its stated commitment to international law and standards, and provides detail on the ways in which its actions are failing to match this rhetoric. The memorandum concludes with Amnesty International’s recommendations.