History

DeSantis’s Pivotal Service at Guantánamo During a Violent Year

Atty. Art Heitzer comments: This article and history are well worth reading. DeSantis has not only championed continuing to keep the US’s Guantánamo prison camp open, but was personally involved in its record of force-feeding prisoners held there without charges. In contrast, when Cuba has been faced with hunger strikers on occasion, it has taken the position that force-feeding is medically unethical — risking and receiving some serious blowback in terms of public relations. The US has taken the opposite stance, as you can read below.

‘Hey, you can actually force-feed,’ Ron DeSantis said he advised, endorsing a practice detainee lawyers described as torture

By Michael Kranish / Washington Post — Ron DeSantis was a 27-year-old Navy lawyer fresh out of Harvard Law School when he arrived in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, amid an escalating crisis at the U.S. military base.

Hundreds of “enemy combatants,” held without charges, had gone on hunger strikes. As pressure grew to end the protests, DeSantis later said, he was part of a team of military lawyers asked what could be done.

“How do I combat this?” a commanding officer asked in 2006, as DeSantis recalled in an interview he gave years later to a local CBS television station.

“Hey, you actually can force-feed,” DeSantis said he responded in his role as a legal adviser. “Here’s what you can do. Here’s kind of the rules for that.”

Ultimately, it was the Pentagon’s decision to authorize force-feeding. Detainees were strapped into a chair…

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