DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Two men deported by the United States to Equatorial Guinea were arbitrarily arrested after police covered their heads with a bag, beat them and held them at gunpoint in a hotel-turned-detention center, their lawyers and rights groups said on Friday.
Ahmed Soliman, an Egyptian national, and Samson Birhane from Eritrea are among over 40 people who have been deported by the United States to Equatorial Guinea, a small oil-rich state
in central Africa. Lawyers said they believed their arbitrary arrests were retaliation for the men raising alarm about the conditions of their detention and the police violence they had endured.
The two men were initially held with a larger group in a hotel on the outskirts of Malabo that the country’s longtime President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has turned into a prison for asylum seekers sent from the U.S. under an opaque $7.5 million deal with the Trump administration. Earlier this year, The Associated Press obtained exclusive access to the hotel.
After their arrest, Soliman and Berhane were transferred from the hotel to the La Luna police station where they are now being held. They have not been able to speak to a lawyer.
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 to deter immigration.
U.S. judges had protected most of those deported to Equatorial Guinea from being returned to their countries of origin. Nevertheless, 12 people have been sent back to their countries of origin, according to their lawyers, including four Ethiopians earlier this month.
Those who remain in detention at the Bamy Hotel have faced violence from authorities, who 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 Strategic Litigation Council, an organization which is part of a coalition representing the individuals 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.”
The authorities tried to pressure Soliman and Birhane to agree to be returned to their countries, their lawyers said, and tried to take away their phones. Videos of Soliman protesting against the treatment by the authorities 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.
The lawyers for Soliman and Birhane said they have not been able to reach the two men since the authorities took them to La Luna police station. Both the men 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 on 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.
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This story has been corrected to show that Soliman and Birhane have been transferred from the hotel to a police station. An earlier version was edited to correct the name of the Global Strategic Litigation Council.
