Two men deported by the United States to Equatorial Guinea have been arbitrarily arrested, their lawyers and rights groups said on Friday, after the police covered their heads with a bag, beat them and held them at gunpoint in a hotel-turned detention ... DAKAR, Senegal -- 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 are being held 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 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 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. 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. Equatorial Guinea is one of at least eight other 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.
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