Allegations that Ron DeSantis force-fed an inmate at Guantanamo Bay don't check out because he was just a low-level grunt at the time, ex-colonel says
- A former Guantanamo detainee alleges that Ron DeSantis force-fed him while he was on a hunger strike.
- But Ron DeSantis was a junior officer as a Navy lawyer at the time.
A former Guantanamo detainee has repeatedly claimed that Ron DeSantis force-fed him when he was a lawyer in the US Navy — but a retired US colonel says the allegation doesn't add up because DeSantis was "too junior" at the time to be involved in the treatment of inmates.
"He was just too junior and too inexperienced and too green to have had any substantial role" in force-feedings, former Air Force colonel Morris Davis told The New York Times. Another lawyer told the Times that DeSantis was doing low-level grunt work at the time.
The former Guantanamo detainee, Mansoor Adayfi, claimed last year that when he was on a hunger strike in the prison, US officials strapped him to a chair, shoved tubes down his throat, and pumped the dietary supplement Ensure into his system while he screamed and cried.
He went on to say that near the end of the force-feeding, DeSantis approached him and said, "You should eat." Adayfi said that in response, he threw up on DeSantis' face.
But Times reporters Matthew Rosenberg and Carol Rosenberg interviewed dozens of people and reviewed records related to DeSantis' visits to Guantanamo; they couldn't find evidence to back up Adayfi's claim.
His lawyer declined to comment on The Times' story.
DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 GOP nomination, has previously denied the allegation. In March, DeSantis said he was just a "junior officer" and "didn't have the authority anything."
"There may have been a commander that would have done feeding if someone was going to die, but that was not something that I would have even had authority to do," he told Piers Morgan in an interview.
A spokesperson for DeSantis' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.