US deportees beaten at Equatorial Guinea’s Hotel Bamy after talking to the press

Police in Equatorial Guinea hooded, bound and beat two men deported from the United States, then pushed them down a staircase inside a hotel that now functions as a jail, according to witnesses, lawyers and Amnesty International. The assault on 11 September targeted Ahmed Soliman, 31, an Egyptian, and Samson Birhane, 47, an Eritrean. Both had been using mobile phones to tell journalists and counsel about conditions at Hotel Bamy, on the outskirts of Malabo.

Officers shouted for the phones while they hit the men with guns, several detainees told The New York Times and The Guardian. Police first accused the pair of breaking a mirror in a lift. They were taken out, brought back with bags over their heads, beaten in front of the other residents, and then moved to La Luna police station and onward to a prison in the city. Lawyers said they had not been able to reach either man after the transfer.

A hotel with armed guards and no charges

Hotel Bamy holds about 29 men and women from mixed nationalities, down from more than 40 people sent to Equatorial Guinea under a third-country arrangement with Washington. None of them face criminal charges in Malabo. Armed officers stand at the building around the clock. Detainees describe irregular water, poor food, little medical care and pressure to accept return to the countries they fled. President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo's family is reported to have an interest in the property. The United States paid about $7.5 million under the deal.

Most of the people on those flights had already won withholding of removal or protection under the UN Convention Against Torture from US immigration judges. They could not be sent home. The Trump administration's answer was to find a third state willing to take them. Equatorial Guinea, a small oil producer with a long record of closed politics, said yes. Several deportees have said they learned the destination only after the aircraft was airborne.

The video that preceded the beating

On 5 September, police pointed what looked like assault rifles at deportees in the hotel lobby during a fight over phones. Reuters published video of that incident. Soliman told the agency he was forced to his knees for 10 to 15 minutes after he started recording. An earlier raid on 31 July, described by lawyers, had already seen masked officers enter rooms, grab people by the neck and threaten them at gunpoint.

Ahmed Soliman had texted the Times earlier in September: "We are in imminent danger now and can't keep living like this. I'm tired and genuinely afraid for my life." He was one of the two men beaten six days later. Amnesty and the men's lawyers say the 11 September attack was punishment for talking.

What Washington will and will not say

A State Department spokesperson, asked about the earlier video, said the United States would use all legal means to remove people with no right to stay. The department has not given a public account of the 11 September beatings. UN experts warned in May that people held in Malabo faced an imminent risk of refoulement. At least some returns to original countries have already happened, according to the Global Detention Project.

Hotel Bamy is not a prison on paper. That is the legal problem. The men and women inside it cannot leave, cannot work, cannot apply for status in any practical way, and now have watched two of their number taken to a real prison after speaking to a newspaper. Third-country deportation was sold in Washington as a way around the courts. In Malabo it has produced a building with room service linens, a police detachment and no charges on file.