Ron DeSantis, during a press event at the Museum of Tolerance, West Jerusalem, was asked about the claim of a former prisoner , that DeSantis, while a Naval Attorney at Guantanamo watched the prisoner being force-fed, a type of torture. “Do you really believe that’s credible?” DeSantis replied with anger.
Mansoor Addayfi was held in Guantanamo for 14 years. He told media outlets that DeSantis saw him forced fed during a 2006 hunger strike. Adayfi wrote in an op/ed piece for Al Jazeera that “As I struggled to escape, I saw DeSantis among the crowd on the other side of chain link. He was watching my struggle. He was laughing and smiling with other officers while I screamed.
What could DeSantis possibly have seen? Adayfi gave us his account but we also have Imad Abdullah Hassan, a more detailed version from a man that spent 12 years at Guantanamo, without being ever charged. Hassan was released by a judge who found that there wasn’t enough evidence to keep him in prison. (779 men have been held in Guantanamo, since its opening in 2002). Only twelve of them were ever charged with crimes. Only two men have been convicted. Hassan was cleared to leave, but he continued to remain at America’s penal colony off-shore without explanation. He was forced-fed after he went on a protest hunger strike (the U.S. Military calls it a “long term non-religious” fast).
Hassan sued the President of the United States for torturing him under the conditions in which he was forced-fed at Guantanamo. He matches Adayfi on certain details.
For feeding, prisoners were strapped into a hospital bed. To feed prisoners faster, a funnel or bag is used to direct large quantities of liquid through the tube. Hassan lost consciousness after the second procedure and was in critical condition for two days.
The prisoners were forced to eat laxatives while they sat on the chair. This caused them to fecate themselves. Hassan, in his lawsuit, said that people with hemorrhoids left blood on the chair. The linens were not changed every time before the next feeding. For up to two hours, prisoners would be strapped on top of other people’s stool and blood.
Hassan has been forcedly sedated at times to make force-feeding easier. Hassan’s force-feeding was restarted if he vomited at any point during the procedure.
Detainees are sometimes denied blankets and the air conditioning is turned up. The cold was more intense for hunger strikers than those who were eating.
The guards banged the cell door of hunger-striking prisoner’s every five minutes, day and night, to keep them awake. One detainee described a situation in which guards pressed forcefully on the back of a man who was lying on his stomach. The result? He vomited.
All of this was something that a young Naval Officer would never forget.
It is not true to suggest that Ron DeSantis was present. DeSantis’ presence is of no interest, given that he is running for president. Even if DeSantis was not present, he would still have heard about the abuse at Gitmo. He could then have issued legal opinions that were in line with this.
It is not important whether DeSantis expressed such opinions, considering the large number of military personnel and civilians who have witnessed torture as well as perpetrated it. They are not as responsible as the men who established the torture regimes and legalized and promoted them: Bush, Obama, Cheney and Biden. DeSantis, as a naval lawyer at Gitmo in his previous role, was a small cog in a large machine.
Ron DeSantis should not be the first American to face punishment for what happened in Guantanamo. DeSantis, out of the hundreds of millions of Americans who want to be president and have a good chance of doing so, is not just any man.
Instead of speculating about what DeSantis witnessed, we should demand a statement from him on torture. Would he, knowing what he now knows, say that legalizing the torture of post-9/11 was the right decision? Would he continue to support torture as president? As president, would you want to close Guantanamo Prison and release the thirty detainees still there?
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We know that Biden, as president, has not made any serious efforts to close Gitmo and reduce its number of prisoners. We know what a young navy officer named DeSantis did, in essence, when confronted with the United States of America’s torture of prisoners for the sake of justice.
DeSantis has repeatedly said that at various points during his career the United States is right to imprison detainees without recourse to the legal system. After joining Congress in 2013, DeSantis became an advocate for keeping the prison opened. He described the hunger strike as part of an attack on the United States and said that claims of abuse by detainees or their lawyers were attempts to manipulate the system. In an Interview from 2018, DeSantis was asked about the hunger strike and said that “what i learned…is that they use things like detainee abuse as offensively against us.” It was a technique, a procedure, and a tactic.”
DeSantis witnessed what he saw. Does he still hold the events of Guantanamo in high regard? We need to know, in the name of “never again”, what DeSantis will do. If you want to be commander-in-chief, saying “I only followed orders” won’t be enough.
