This week, the U.S. transferred 11 Guantanamo Bay detainees to Oman, bringing the prison population down to just 15—the lowest it’s ever been. It’s a big shift in U.S. policy, especially since none of these detainees, held for over 20 years since 9/11, have faced formal charges.

Remember when President Obama promised to close Guantanamo in 2009? That promise feels more distant than ever, but this latest move brings new attention to the camp’s future.

We sat down with Alka Pradhan, Human Rights Counsel at the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions, who represents one of the defendants in the high-profile 9/11 case. Alka is an expert in applying human rights and humanitarian law to counterterrorism cases and the impact of torture on fair trials. She also serves as Associate Counsel at the International Criminal Court.

In this episode, we dig into some heavy topics: torture, international humanitarian law, and how Guantanamo’s legacy is influencing global events, including the language around Israel and Palestine.

Her choice of trials were the ICJ big one – Nicaragua v the USA and the Altstoetter case – that’s from the US-run Military Tribunals post Second World War on membership of an illegal organisation.

Although Alka’s favourite book of all time is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, she highly recommends reading The Prisoner: A Memoir by Hwang Sok-yong.