US Deportees Sent to Equatorial Guinea Decry Inhumane Conditions, Imprisonment

Two men deported from the United States to Equatorial Guinea were arrested by local police forces and transferred to a prison earlier this month, in apparent retaliation for speaking out about conditions they faced in the Central African country. Samson Birhane, who is from Eritrea, and Ahmed Soliman, a gay asylum seeker from Egypt, were both deported by the Trump administration despite U.S. immigration courts granting them protections.

On September 11, police forces arrived at Hotel Bamy in the city of Malabo, where more than two dozen people have been confined after their deportation from the United States to Equatorial Guinea, a country they have no ties to, as part of President Trump’s secretive “third-country” agreements. Birhane and Soliman say they were arrested and taken to prison for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by U.S. deportees at the hotel and threats by armed forces. While confined at the hotel, U.S. deportees have decried denial of medical care and legal assistance, and abuses they’ve described as psychological torture.

“Starting in November 2025, … the United States started this horrendous policy of sending immigrants not from Equatorial Guinea to Equatorial Guinea, a country that the U.S. knows very, very well that is a human rights violator,” says human rights lawyer Tutu Alicante. “The State Department reports that the U.S. has been putting out for the last three decades are consistent about the fact that Equatorial Guinea uses torture, uses incommunicado detentions, and often extrajudicial killings of people that it keeps in prison.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Amnesty International is calling for the release of two men deported from the U.S. to Equatorial Guinea. They were arrested by local police forces there and transferred to a prison earlier this month. The men are Samson Birhane, who is with — who is from Eritrea, and Ahmed Soliman, a gay asylum seeker from Egypt, who was living in Arizona when he was detained by ICE. Both of them were deported by the Trump administration despite U.S. immigration courts granting them protections.

On September 11th, police forces arrived at Hotel Bami in the city of Malabo in Equatorial Guinea, where more than two dozen men and women have been confined after their deportation from the U.S. This is a country, Equatorial Guinea, they have no ties to, part of a secretive so-called third-country agreement.

It’s believed the two men were arrested and taken to prison for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by U.S. deportees at the hotel and threats by armed forces. Just days before their arrest, video footage obtained by Reuters showed guards pointing their guns at a group of U.S. deportees inside the hotel after a Cuban man asked an officer to return his confiscated cellphone so he could contact his family and lawyer. This is Ahmed Soliman describing what happened that day. This was before his arrest. He’s since been taken to a prison in Malabo.

AHMED SOLIMAN: Yesterday morning, another detainee here has had his phone confiscated for about two weeks, and he went downstairs to speak to the officers to try to have them call the director in charge, who is also their boss. Like I said, he hasn’t had his phone for about two weeks. He hasn’t been able to talk to his loved ones, his family, his lawyers, which in turn is a violation of human right laws. We are not criminals in this country. We deserve rights. We have rights, and we know our rights. So, after about 15-20 minutes of him being downstairs pleading with these officers to call the director, these officers were completely disregarding his pleas, his requests, and were just ignoring him, not giving him the time of day, were sitting on their phones, not even listening to him. …

That’s when they then took us inside the hotel, where they pointed their guns at me. They cocked their guns, took it off of safety and pointed their guns at me, telling me to get on my knees with my hands up, where I had to remain in that position for, you know, 10-15 minutes, while there was chaos going on in the hotel. …

We were trying to fight to get his phone back. We weren’t fighting violently. We were not rioting. We were not protesting. We just were demanding our human rights. We know our human rights, and that’s what we deserve, and that’s what we want. That’s all — that’s all we ask for. That’s all we asked for since we’ve been here. And somehow we are still getting violated time and time again.

AMY GOODMAN: This all comes as a federal appeals court has rejected Trump’s policy of rapidly deporting immigrants to third countries they have no connection to. Friday’s ruling sets up a likely challenge at the Supreme Court. More than 25,000 immigrants have been deported to at least 29 third countries they have no ties to since Trump returned to office.

For more, we go to North Carolina, where we’re joined by Tutu Alicante, a human rights lawyer from Equatorial Guinea and founder and director of EG Justice — that’s Equatorial Guinea Justice. His latest for Just Security is headlined “America Sent Them into a Dictatorship’s Torture Chambers, Then Looked Away.” He’s joining us from Chapel Hill.

Tutu Alicante, thanks so much for being with us. How many migrants to the United States have — immigrants have been sent to Equatorial Guinea?

TUTU ALICANTE: So, first of all, thank you for having me, Amy. It’s a pleasure to be here.

So far, the United States has sent 66 immigrants from countries other than Equatorial Guinea to Equatorial Guinea. And we are talking about mostly immigrants from African countries, although we have also had people from Georgia, as well as, most recently, people from Cuba and Brazil.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, talk about these two men. And talk about the allegations that they are being brutalized, and also if we’ve heard from them in prison now.

TUTU ALICANTE: Yeah. So, before I do that, you know, I would like to lay out a bit of the timeline here. So, starting in November 2025, 10 months ago, the United States started this horrendous policy of sending immigrants not from Equatorial Guinea to Equatorial Guinea, a country that the U.S. knows very, very well that is a human rights violator. How do we know that? Because the State — the State Department reports that the U.S. have been putting out for the last three decades are consistent about the fact that Equatorial Guinea uses torture, uses incommunicado detentions, and often extrajudicial killings of people that it keeps in prison. So, this is the country that the Trump administration has decided to send immigrants, many of whom, as you alluded to in your intro, has already achieved a huge level of protection from immigration judges in the U.S.

Now, in the case of these two individuals, Mr. Ahmed Soliman from Egypt — and we should say, Ahmed came to the U.S. when he was 4 years old and grew up in Arizona, right? So, this is a 30-year-old man that has, for all intents and purposes, lived in the U.S. his whole life. The other individual, Samson, Samson Birhane, is a gentleman from Eritrea. What do we know? We know that these individuals were taken, in my opinion, illegally to Equatorial Guinea under false pretenses. Many of them did not know until they were almost in Equatorial Guinea where they were going to. And once there, were denied the ability to contact their family members. Their phones were taken away. They have been denied access to lawyers. I, myself, and my colleagues represent many of these individuals at the African Commission, and we have the lawyers that represent them here in the U.S., and it has been impossible to establish a regular contact with them, so meaning effective — effective assistance of counsel is impossible. Access to family members is impossible. In many instances, access to medication, which many of these individuals need, is impossible.

These are two brave individuals that, in the face of injustices, stood up to protect other deportees whose phone was being taken away or who were being harassed by the military. And as a result, they found themselves being subjected, in the case of Ahmed, having a gun pointed at him, and then eventually taken to prison, brought back, hooded and with ropes tied around their bodies, basically being tortured in front of the immigrants as a sign to the other immigrants as to what happens when you stand up.

AMY GOODMAN: Tutu Alicante, can you talk about what you understand to be the third-party agreement? We just did a story on people being sent from the United States to the Central African Republic, and they got millions of dollars from the United States. In Equatorial Guinea, you talk about it being one of the most closed, corrupt and repressive dictatorships in the world. Teodoro Obiang has ruled the country since 1979, making him the longest-reigning ruler in the world. What do you know he got?

TUTU ALICANTE: Yeah, well, a couple of things. And before we know — before we talk about what he got, you know, we should be clear, Amy, that this is extraordinary rendition all over again, in broad daylight. Right?

What did the government of Equatorial Guinea get in return? A couple of things. One, which is insignificant given the level of corruption that exists in Equatorial Guinea, is $7.5 million of American taxpayers’ money. But more importantly for the government of Equatorial Guinea is the legitimacy that comes from being on the good side of the United States.

Your audience should know, Amy, that this is a government that the U.S. Senate Committee on Investigations in 2004 did a huge report on, after investigating Riggs Bank, and identified and documented corruption, millions of dollars coming from Equatorial Guinea to Riggs Bank. In 2010, the vice president, who is now running the show, Mr. Teodoro Nguema Obiang, Teodorín, basically also has his assets confiscated by the U.S. Department of Justice following another Senate investigation that looked at how he was able to bring millions of dollars into the United States. And as I mentioned earlier, the State Department has documented, year after year, the level of human rights violations that exist in this country. So, for them, getting Trump administration — the Trump administration to strike this deal was about gaining the legitimacy that would allow Teodorín, the current vice president, son of the president, to very soon become officially the president.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Tutu Alicante, I want to thank you for being with us. We’ll continue to follow the cases of Ahmed Soliman from Egypt and Samson Birhane, originally from Eritrea, and so many others, not only who’ve been sent to Equatorial Guinea, but to other third-party countries, as well. Tutu Alicante is human rights lawyer from Equatorial Guinea. He’s the executive director of EG Justice.

Coming up, the extraordinary performer Sarah Jones on her one-woman play, America, Who Hurt You? Back in 20 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: Folk musician Nora Brown with Stephanie Coleman singing “The Unicorn” at the Kennedy Center.