As former president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump prepares to be arrested in New York on Tuesday, we turn now to look at a growing controversy about one of Trump’s likely presidential opponents. That’s Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, widely expected to seek the Republican nomination for president.
Prior to entering politics, DeSantis served in the Navy as an attorney at the U.S. prison at Guantánamo and in Fallujah, Iraq. DeSantis’s time at Guantánamo is coming under scrutiny after a former prisoner, named Mansoor Adayfi, revealed that DeSantis had personally witnessed him being force-fed and tortured. Other prisoners have backed up Adayfi’s account. Last month, DeSantis denied authorizing force-feeding at Guantánamo.
Well, with DeSantis expected to soon launch a run for the White House, we’re joined by former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi. At the age of 18, he left his home in Yemen to do research in Afghanistan. Shortly before he was scheduled to return home, he was kidnapped by Afghan warlords and sold to the CIA after the September 11th attacks. He was jailed and tortured in Afghanistan, then transported to the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo in 2002, where he was held without charge for 14 years, many of those years in solitary confinement. Mansoor Adayfi now joins us from his home in Belgrade, [Serbia]. In 2021, he published a memoir titled Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo.
— source democracynow.org | Apr 03, 2023