Former Guantánamo Prisoner: Ron DeSantis Watched My Torture When He Was a Navy Lawyer at Gitmo

As Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis plans to run for president in 2024, his time at Guantánamo is coming under scrutiny. Prior to entering politics, DeSantis served in the Navy as an attorney, first at the U.S. prison at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba and later in Iraq. Former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi says DeSantis personally witnessed him being force-fed and tortured, and other prisoners have backed up Adayfi’s account. He joins us from his home in Belgrade for his first television interview about DeSantis’s role at Guantánamo. “While I was screaming, yelling because I couldn’t breathe … he was actually laughing, looking at the other officers and smiling,” Adayfi says of DeSantis. “He wasn’t involved directly in the force-feeding. I didn’t see him give any orders to the guards. But he was there, supervising, watching.” Adayfi was imprisoned without charge for 14 years and seven months before being released in 2016 to Serbia. In 2021, he published a memoir titled Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo.