Today on the MERIP Podcast we’re sharing a recording of a live event featuring Lisa Hajjar and John Ryan discussing their last two decades of reporting, researching and writing from Guantanamo Bay. This event, which took place in Washington, DC, at Busboys and Poets on September 13th, marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the opening of the Guantanamo Bay facility that has housed those captured and imprisoned in the course of the so-called war on terror. Hajjar and Ryan discussed the continued injustice of the indefinite detention of prisoners at this US military compound, the obstacles to accountability put in place by the US Department of Defense and the present and future prospects of the facility and those who remain detained there.
Lisa Hajjar is a longtime MERIP contributor and editor, as well as a professor of sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the author of The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture, which chronicles her observations of trials at Guantanmo and was published in 2022 by the University of California Press. John Ryan is a co-founder of Lawdragon Inc. and has won numerous accolades as a legal affairs journalist over the past 25 years. Since 2015, John has been one of just two reporters to report regularly on the military tribunals from Guantanamo Bay, earning three New York Press Club Awards for his work. His book, America’s Trial: Torture and the 9/11 Case on Guantanmo Bay was published by Skyhorse in 2025. The event was moderated by Alka Pradhan, an expert on the application of human rights and humanitarian law to counterterrorism situations, and the impact of torture on fair trials. She is currently Human Rights Counsel at the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions, representing one of the defendants in the capital case of United States v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (the “9/11 case”).
Further Reading:
Lisa Hajjar, The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2022)
John Ryan, America’s Trial: Torture and the 9/11 Case on Guantanmo Bay (New York, Skyhorse, 2025)
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