Did Ron DeSantis witness an inmate getting tortured while serving at Guantánamo Bay?

In March 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was accused by a former inmate at Guantánamo Bay of watching his torture while DeSatnis was stationed at the deletion camp in 2006. Here's what we know as well as what happened after the story broke.

In a groundbreaking exposé from The Independent, journalist Richard Hall revealed Governor DeSantis was once allegedly witness to Mansoor Adayfi’s force-feeding during a 2006 hunger strike. 

Adayfi is a Yemeni citizen that was held at Guantánamo Bay’s detention camp for 14 years and claimed he was force-fed at the prison during a 2006 hunger strike. 

“Mansoor Adayfi describes it as one of the worst stretches of his 14-year imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay,” Hall wrote as he described what happened to his interviewee. 

“In 2006, he was in the midst of a hunger strike with a number of his fellow detainees in protest over the conditions inside the notorious prison,” Hall continued. 

Breaking the hunger strike was of chief concern to camp officials and Hall alleged that a new group of people was brought in to try a more aggressive form of force-feeding. 

Adayfi told Hall that at one point his entire body was strapped to a chair in the camp yard and a feeding tube was forced up through his nose. 

Camp staff and military personnel allegedly watched on as Adayfi was “bleeding and vomiting and screaming,” and among them was Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, though Adayfi didn’t know this fact at the time of his alleged torture. 

It wasn’t until years later—after Adayfi was released and living in Serbia—that the former Guantánamo Bay detainee came across an image of DeStanis on the internet and realized the Flordia Governor stood by and watched as he was force feed through his nose. 

“He was watching, and I was really screaming, crying,” Adayfi told Hall during a video interview—though its important to note the information had not been independently verified. 

“I was bleeding and throwing up. We were in the block yard, so they were close to the fence,” Adayfi claimed. 

In 2013, a United Nations report on the situation that unfolded at Guantánamo Bay found that the force-feeding of prisoners could amount to torture, a definition that the United States government denied according to Hall. 

Knowing if DeStanis actually watched Adayfi’s torture is difficult to establish since he was stationed at Guantánamo at the time the force-feeding would have occurred but no record of the event has yet to be uncovered.

In 2006, DeSantis was posted to Joint Task Force Guantánamo just as its leaders were wrestling with new tactics they thought would break the hunger strikes in the detention camp according to The Miami Herald’s Michael Wilner. 

“It is an experience in the Florida governor’s life that he rarely discusses publicly and remains largely unexplored,” Wilner wrote, “even as he appears poised to mount a campaign for the White House.”

DeSantis never publically commented on the allegation that he witnessed Adayfi’s alleged torture via force feeding but one of his commander officers from the time defend him, saying that "DeSantis served honorably and professionally in a very complex mission."

When the Florida Governor was asked about the allegations in April, DeSantis said: "No, no, all that’s BS...No, totally, totally BS,” during a press conference in Jeruselum according to The Hill.

“How would they know me?” DeSantis continued, “OK, think about that. Do you honestly believe that’s credible? So, this is 2006. I’m a junior officer. Do you honestly think that they would have remembered me from Adam? Of course not.”

“They’re just trying to get into the news because they know people like you will consume it because it fits your preordained narrative that you’re trying to spin,” DeSantis continued. “Focus on the facts and stop worrying about narrative.”

The allegations never seemed to stick to the Florida Governor and little has been said about the matter since the story broke. He has yet to be asked about the situation while on the campaign trail, but maybe it will come up in the first Republican Party presidential debate set to take place on August 23rd.