The Dark Past of Ron DeSantis in Guantanamo Prison

First-class baseball player, graduate of the prestigious universities of Yale and Harvard, officer in the US Navy, decorated veteran with a bronze star, governor of Florida – and then possibly a Republican presidential candidate. This is Ron DeSantis’ resume.

Compared to former President Donald Trump’s image, DeSantis looks almost flawless. But his past is not so free of scandals either. And now Trump — and journalists with their research — are poking into this hitherto pristine bee nest.

The ex-president is familiar with scandals. He is currently facing a possible charge of hush money. In addition, DeSantis recently handed out to Trump. He doesn’t know “how to pay a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged affair.” DeSantis has “real problems” in the state of Florida that he has to deal with. Apparently, Trump can’t let this swipe sit on him.

Trump vs. DeSantis: Mudfight of the top Republicans

Trump shared a screenshot of a MeidasTouch article on his Truth Social platform. In it, the US media network alleges that the governor of Florida “celebrated with underage girls at a drinking party while he taught at a Georgia school.”

Trump predicts to his competitor that false accusations and lies will flourish. But of course false accusations are not necessary. Two reputable newspapers uncovered facts about DeSantis’ past that he might have preferred locked away in his basement.

On closer inspection, an intermediate station in his CV does not shed a good light on the “clean man”: his job as a junior lawyer in the Navy at Guantanamo detention camp.

Guantanamo Prison Camp: torture, abuse and DeSantis in the heat of battle

The prison is part of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, a US naval base in Cuba. DeSantis was stationed at the base between March 2006 and January 2007. This is evidenced by his military files, which are available to the British newspaper “Independent”.

Explosive: The camp was at the time the center of global criticism for its brutal methods of torture and ill-treatment – and right in the middle, DeSantis as legal counsel on force-feeding.

Prisoners piled naked on top of each other. An American soldier pulls a naked prisoner by the leash lying on the ground. Countless prisoners in orange prison clothes kneel side by side on the floor – their heads covered with black sacks. It’s those images that went around the world. At the time, young DeSantis worked there. 17 years later, he is making a name for himself as a potential presidential candidate.

DeSantis as a young Navy lawyer at Guantanamo

According to a report in the American newspaper “Washington Post”, 27-year-old DeSantis took over the job as a Navy lawyer at the Guantanamo detention camp right after Harvard Law School. There he advised on the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike. Lawyers for those affected and international organizations described the measures as torture.

And DeSantis?

“I was assigned to deal with these terrorists,” he explained in a 2018 interview with a local CBS television station. DeSantis remembers a commander asking him for advice on how to deal with the hunger strikers. “They can even be force-fed,” replies DeSantis in his role as legal counsel. “Here’s what you can do. Here are the rules for it.”

According to the Washington Post, it was ultimately the Pentagon’s decision to allow force-feeding. This is how the procedure went: Detainees were tied to a chair and a tube inserted into their nose. According to military records, two cans of protein drink were poured over it. Lawyers for the detainees unsuccessfully tried to stop the painful method, arguing that it violated international torture conventions.

DeSantis is said to have had a close look at some of the prison camp’s most disturbing incidents. This is according to research by the Washington Post. The American newspaper examined public records and media reports and conducted dozens of interviews. For example, the commander of DeSantis, the jailer, former prisoners and lawyers were interviewed.

He walked through corridors of steel bars and looked many prisoners straight in the eye, his former commanding officer, Patrick McCarthy, tells the newspaper. According to him, DeSantis communicated directly with the inmates and their lawyers. A victim remembers him.

A former inmate remembers DeSantis

“He was watching and I was really screaming, crying,” Mansoor Adayfi told The Independent. The Yemeni citizen is said to have been held at the US naval base for 14 years. During his hunger strike in 2006, he was brutally forced to feed by camp staff. DeSantis reportedly attended at least one of those sessions. Adayfi tells the newspaper about the procedure. “I bled and vomited and screamed as several uniformed soldiers watched.”

According to research by The Washington Post, DeSantis has repeatedly argued that the United States was right to hold prisoners outside the justice system. He criticized the allegations of abuse by detainees and their lawyers as an attempt to manipulate the system.

When asked about the hunger strikes, DeSantis said in a CBS interview, “What I learned from that … is that they use things like prisoner abuse aggressively against us. It was a tactic, technique, and approach.” Independent human rights organizations see it differently.

Guantanamo: “ugly chapter” of human rights violations

The United Nations had described the force-feeding as torture. The International Committee of the Red Cross has issued a similar assessment of prison conditions. At the time, the US government denied these allegations.

But UN experts to this day agree:

According to a 2022 UN report, Guantanamo is an “ugly chapter of unrelenting human rights abuses”. According to the Washington Post and the Independent, DeSantis’s agency did not respond to a detailed list of questions during their investigation. DeSantis should not be accused of following orders, says his former boss, McCarthy. He warns against the story: It’s all DeSantis’s fault.

Still, Trump probably can’t help but nickname DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious,” in German “Ron, the hypocrite.” Trump announced in November that if DeSantis ran, he would say things about him that weren’t particularly flattering.

(t-online/cpf)