21 August 2023

Allegations about Ron DeSantis at Guantanamo may be unfounded

Excerpts from "See No Evil", published in Harper's Magazine, March 2023:

From a November discussion on the Eyes Left podcast, between Mike Prysner, an Iraq War veteran, and Mansoor Adayfi, a former detainee at Guantánamo Bay.
mansoor adayfi: As you know, Guantánamo was created out of the legal zone, out of the legal system. Torture was the mechanism of Guantánamo. Torture, abuse, and experimenting on prisoners. We went on a massive hunger strike in 2005. And there was force-feeding. It was torture.

I saw a fucking handsome person come in and he said, “I’m here to ensure that you are treated humanely.”

mike prysner: It was Ron DeSantis?

adayfi: Yes. And, “If you have any problems, if you have any concerns, just talk to me.” We were drowning in that place. So I was like, “Oh, this is cool. This person will raise the concerns.” But it was a piece of the game. What they were doing was looking for what hurts us more so they could use it against us. In 2006, when DeSantis was there, it was one of the worst times at Guantánamo. The administration, the guards, all of them were the worst. They cracked down on us so hard. When they came to break our hunger strike, a team came to us. The head of the team, he was a general. He said, “I have a job. I was sent here to break your fucking hunger strike. I don’t care why you are here. I don’t care who you are. My job is to make you eat. Today we are talking. Tomorrow there will be no talking.” The second day, they brought piles of Ensure and they started force-feeding us over and over again.

prysner: For those who don’t know, Ensure is a thick milky nutritional shake mainly marketed on daytime television to elderly people. It is very hard to drink.

adayfi: Yes, and Ron DeSantis was there watching us. We were crying, screaming. We were tied to the feeding chair. And he was watching. He was laughing. Our stomachs could not hold this amount of Ensure. They poured one can after another. So when he approached me, I said, “This is the way we are treated!” He said, “You should eat.” I threw up in his face. Literally on his face...

prysner: It was well deserved. A JAG lawyer at the time, he would have been well aware this was a violation of international law. There is no question that it was torture.

adayfi: They used to restrain us in that feeding chair. They tied our head, our shoulders, our wrists, our thighs, and our legs. They put some kind of laxative in the feeding liquid. We were shitting ourselves all the time. Then we were moved to solitary confinement—really cold cells. It was like five times a day. It wasn’t feeding. It was just torture. Five times a day. You can’t possibly handle it. They just kept pouring the Ensure. In one week, they broke all the hunger strikers. And he was there. All of them were watching. They also used to beat us. And if we screamed or were bleeding out of our nose and mouth, they were like, “Eat.” The only word they told you was “eat.” We were beaten all day long. Whatever you were doing—they just beat you. Pepper spray, beating, sleep deprivation. That continued for three months. And he was there. He was one of the people that supervised the torture, the abuses, the beatings. All the time at Guantánamo.

prysner: So Ron DeSantis was actually supervising torture, beatings? He was supervising these force-feedings?

adayfi: I’m telling Americans: this guy is a torturer. He is a criminal. He was laughing. And he was there to ensure we were treated humanely.

prysner: He was laughing?

adayfi: Yes, they were looking at us, laughing because we were shitting ourselves. I was screaming and yelling. When your stomach is full of Ensure you can’t breathe. And you are throwing up at the same time. I was screaming. I looked at him and he was actually smiling. Like someone who was enjoying it...

prysner: So he basically was gathering intelligence to tell the interrogators what it was that was impacting you most so they could do it more.

adayfi: I remember when we were talking about the noise in the night. We were talking about the vacuums, the generators, the fans, and everything. And they brought more stuff.

prysner: You told DeSantis this and then they increased the noise?

adayfi: They increased the noise. And also the food, for example. We told him we don’t eat meat. What the guards did after that is they mixed all the food with meat.
More at the link.  This is unlikely to come up at the Republican debate this week, so I'll present it here.  The mic is open for your comments; please keep them civil.

Addendum:  Related onnline articles from the mainstream media -

The Guardian, April 2023 "questions haunt the Florida governor"

Rolling Stone, July 2023 "documentary about this has been cancelled"

Forbes, June 2023 "Showtime pulls show about this"

The Hill, April 2023 "DeSantis fumes, calls this 'totally bullshit'"

Addendum:  DeSantis' military service came up during the debate, during which he said he was deployed "with the Navy SEALs."  The Daily Beast clarified that..
"DeSantis also spent time during his JAG career stationed at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was an assistant urinalysis coordinator."

Addendum September 24: "A former prisoner’s story of mistreatment at the hands of Ron DeSantis made headlines. But The New York Times found no evidence to back it up... an examination of military records and interviews with detainees’ lawyers and service members who served at the same time as Mr. DeSantis found no evidence to back up the claims. The New York Times interviewed more than 40 people who served with Mr. DeSantis or around the same time and none recalled witnessing or even hearing of any episodes like the ones Mr. Adayfi described."  More information at The New York Times.

13 comments:

  1. How can this not be reported by the MSM? How can this guy get away with this? WTF is happening to this country?

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    Replies
    1. I've added some MSM links as an addendum to the post.

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    2. Thanks!

      I note though that these are all from 2023. Dude ran first in 2012 for congress, 2018 for governor.

      And to others: Yes, this might make him more attractive to some. But also a lot less attractive to others. These tests of character matter. The public deserves to know so it can make up its mind. The fact that he never proudly talked about his time in Gitmo is telling. As is the fact that journalists haven't dug very deep in interviews.

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  2. What I don't understand is why these things didn't come up when this dingbat ran his first election campaign. Or any subsequent one.

    How does anyone get elected twice to one of the largest states with this not being common knowledge?

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    1. Mr. Adayfi did not write his book until 2021. Mr. Adayfi did not make the allegations naming Mr. DeSantis publicly until November of 2022.

      There were no allegations during Mr. DeSantis' first election campaign in 2018, and if Mr. Adayfi first publicly identified Mr. Desantis in November 2022, the allegations would likely have been too late to have an impact on the Florida governor's race last year.

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  3. "How does anyone get elected twice to one of the largest states with this not being common knowledge?"

    Deference to those in uniform, fighting terrorism. Of course shame, embarrassment, guilt, empire, 'national security,' come into play as well as gleeful ignorance across a sizeable swath which is lubricated by $800B budget. Besides, you just don't talk about what happens to those people such matters in polite society.

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  4. For some voters, this will made him all the more attractive.

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  5. I wonder if there's any real evidence that the torture stopped under Obama? (I think Americans have a lot to answer for re Guantanamo, and we didn't care enough really to make real efforts to stop it.)
    I also think if it gets mentioned in the debate, a lot of people on stage would assert that torture was "necessary" and thus acceptable. And too many Americans would believe them.

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  6. In those days, such was our continuing anger at terrorism that most of us likely didn't have near the qualms we might have today. We wanted answers...anyway we could get them. (If you want one of the most chilling movies on such things as you're likely to see, watch "Unthinkable" with Samuel Jackson--scarier in some ways that most horrors films.)

    The truth is that we were "feeling our way" forward. But it bothers me deeply than anyone can watch torture taking place, let alone blithely perform it. I mean, isn't there some little voice inside that says, "No, this is not right"?

    Not only to we brutalize the recipient of torture, we brutalize ourselves. I don't need that on my conscience. No one does. If they took them out and shot every one of them in the head, I have to believe that would be more humane (even if unjust) than to torture them. It breaks humans who receive or give it. At least if they have an ounce of conscience.

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  7. Thank you for posting this. I am stunned and a bit terrified that your blog is the first I'd heard of the connection between him and Guantanamo. I will be sharing this information with my Florida friends.

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    1. Here is the relevant paragraph from his Wikipedia page:
      In the spring of 2006, DeSantis arrived at Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), working directly with detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[32][33][34][35] The records of his service in the Navy were often redacted upon release to the public, to protect personal privacy, according to the Navy.[36] Mansur Ahmad Saad al-Dayfi, who was held at Guantanamo, alleged in 2022 that DeSantis oversaw force-feeding detainees.[37][38][39][40][35]

      The numbered citations are linked in Wikipedia.

      So the information is "out there." It's just not talked about, for various reasons. I have no doubt whatsoever that it's in the Democratic "oppo" files for use if he becomes the Republian nominee, and I have no doubt that Trump is also aware of it. It will be interesting to see what happens when it surfaces.

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  8. Washington Post, New Republic, Al Jazeera, Business Insider, Esquire, Miami Herald, Yahoo News, The American Conservative, The Daily Beast, CBS News, MSNBC, Newsweek, CNN, Daily Mail, Snopes, Milwaukee Independent, Orlando Sentinel, New York Daily News, NBC News, Tampa Bay Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The BBC, the Nation, Politico, Reddit, HuffPost, KXAN-TV (Texas), CBS4Indy, WFRV 5 (Wisconsin), KTT2 (Florida), YouTube, The Onion...

    A short list of news sources that carried stories about the DeSantis-Guantanamo allegations between March and July of 2023. It's not like a bunch of former high level government intelligence officials signed a letter that the Gitmo story was Russian disinformation and helped in an effort to effectively kill the story. That would be stunning and terrifying.

    As mentioned above, Democratic strategists have these allegations ready to go if Mr. DeSantis turns out to be the nominee, which seems unlikely right now.

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  9. I've added an addendum to the post, including a link that describes his service as follows:

    "DeSantis also spent time during his JAG career stationed at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was an assistant urinalysis coordinator."

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