U.S. Deportees Were Arrested and Beaten in Equatorial Guinea, Lawyers Say
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Two men deported by the United States to Equatorial Guinea were arbitrarily arrested after police covered their heads with bags, beat them and held them at gunpoint in a hotel-turned-detention center, their lawyers and rights groups said Friday.
Ahmed Soliman, an Egyptian national, and Samson Birhane, an Eritrean, are among more than 40 people deported by the United States to Equatorial Guinea, a small, oil-rich country in Central Africa. Their lawyers believe the arrests were retaliation for the men raising alarms about detention conditions and police violence.
The two are being held at a hotel on the outskirts of Malabo that President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, in power for decades, has turned into a prison for asylum seekers sent from the U.S. under an opaque $7.5 million agreement with the Trump administration. Earlier this year, The Associated Press obtained exclusive access to the hotel.
The Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries other than their own under a series of obscure agreements. Advocates say the transfers are part of a broader U.S. crackdown aimed at deterring immigration.
U.S. judges had protected most of those sent to Equatorial Guinea from being returned to their countries of origin. Still, 12 people have been sent back, according to their lawyers, including four Ethiopians earlier this month.
Those who remain at the Bamy Hotel have faced violence from authorities, who have tried to confiscate everyone's phones, their lawyers said.
“Over the past months, we have observed escalating cases of police violence,” said Isabella Mosselmans, director of the Global Litigation Council, part of a coalition representing the people detained in Malabo. “On July 31, masked Equatorial Guinean police officers broke into a number of the hotel rooms of five people ... and grabbed them by the neck and tackled them to the ground and handcuffed them and threatened them at gunpoint.”
Authorities tried to pressure Soliman and Birhane to agree to be returned to their countries and tried to take away their phones, their lawyers said. Videos of Soliman protesting the treatment and being held at gunpoint by a police officer in the hotel have been published in international media.
Police arrested Soliman and Birhane on Sept. 11, accusing them of breaking a mirror. Officers later brought the men back to the hotel with bags over their heads and beat them in front of other detainees, according to the lawyers.
Their lawyers said they have not been able to reach the two men since authorities took them to La Luna police station. Both had lived in the United States for decades before being deported.
“Amnesty International believes that the police officers targeted them in reprisal for reporting the authorities' violent threats to coerce them to agree to return to their countries of origin,” the rights group said in a statement Friday. “Since then, the two men have been held in an overcrowded police cell, in inhumane conditions, unable to speak to their lawyer.”
Immigration lawyers say the Trump administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their countries of origin. Equatorial Guinea is one of at least eight African nations to have entered into such an agreement with the United States.
Equatorial Guinea is one of Africa's richest countries because of its oil resources, but U.S. officials say it is also plagued by corruption and human rights abuses.
Critical voices are almost nonexistent in the country, where rights groups and the U.S. State Department have accused the government of detaining, torturing and even killing people who speak out.
U.S. companies are among the country's largest foreign investors, and the military receives U.S. funding for training.
The case highlights a central paradox of the third-country deportation strategy: while the United States says it is removing people who cannot legally remain, sending them to countries with poor human rights records can leave them with fewer protections and little access to legal recourse. For the men in Malabo, lawyers and advocates say, the consequences have been swift and severe—and difficult for U.S. courts or Congress to monitor.