JFC!
Showtime Pulls Documentary About DeSantis’ Controversial History At Guantanamo Bay, Report Says
Showtime did not air an episode of the Vice documentary series about Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-Fla.) Navy service at the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison, according to The Hollywood Reporter—a period of DeSantis’ military career that has been dogged by accusations that he oversaw torture tactics and had a role in an alleged cover-up of suspicious deaths, claims the 2024 candidate has denied.
Showtime pulled promos from its website for episode four of the Vice series titled “The Gitmo Candidate & Chipping Away,” originally scheduled to air May 28, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which noted the network instead aired a repeat episode of the documentary on May 28 and referred to the June 4 program as episode four.
The network teased details from the episode about the GOP presidential candidate’s tenure serving as a Navy JAG lawyer at the U.S. military prison in Cuba, including an investigation of allegations that “DeSantis witnessed acts condemned by the United Naions as torture.”
DeSantis has faced questions about his role working as a lawyer at the prison during a turbulent time, when the U.S. military admittedly engaged in what were deemed torture tactics by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Former Guantanamo prisoner-turned-activist Mansoor Adayfi alleged in his 2021 memoir that DeSantis supervised as he was force-fed to break a hunger strike that prisoners—many being held without charges—had started to protest inhumane conditions at the facility and lack of a fair judicial process. Around that same time, in 2006, three prisoners were found hanging in their cells, and DeSantis, then a 27-year-old recent Harvard Law graduate, was called in to help collect evidence, the Washington Post reported. While the deaths were ruled suicides by the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, the prisoners’ families and human rights lawyers have cast doubt on the official account, alleging it is rife with inconsistencies and missing information. DeSantis, recalling the deaths in a 2018 CBS Miami interview said the detainees “committed suicide with hunger strikes,” explaining that he and other legal advisers helped commanders decide how to combat prisoners’ protest tactics: “One of the jobs of the legal adviser would be like ‘hey you actually can force feed, here’s what you can do, here’s kind of the rules of that.’”
DeSantis has denied Adayfi’s allegations as “totally BS,” claiming they were designed to generate publicity. “Do you honestly believe that’s credible?” DeSantis asked reporters in a heated exchange in Jerusalem in April. “So, this is 2006. I’m a junior officer. Do you honestly think that they would have remembered me from Adam? Of course not.” DeSantis’ commander during his time in Cuba, where he spent approximately six months, told McClatchy in March DeSantis “served honorably and professionally in a very complex mission,” retired Navy Capt. Patrick McCarthy said, noting that one of DeSantis’ duties involved speaking “with detainees when there were any complaints to ensure they were lawfully addressed.”
The Emmy-winning Vice first aired on HBO in 2013 in collaboration with Vice Media and chronicles investigations of geopolitical issues, including Edward Snowden’s 2013 leak of National Security Agency documents, climate change and terrorism in the Middle East. Showtime acquired the program in 2019.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2023/06/05/showtime-pulls-documentary-about-desantis-controversial-history-at-guantanamo-bay-report-says/?sh=3d9d61c37276
