Two men removed from the United States to Equatorial Guinea have been held without access to their lawyers since police arrested them in Malabo on 11 September 2026, according to an urgent action published by Amnesty International on 18 September and reporting by the Associated Press. Lawyers and rights groups allege that officers covered the men's heads, beat them and took them to an overcrowded police cell. Those are serious allegations, not findings tested in court.
The men are Ahmed Soliman, an Egyptian national, and Samson Birhane, an Eritrean national who arrived in the United States as a refugee when he was 13. Amnesty says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flew Soliman from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Malabo on 29 April and Birhane on 19 June. Both had received U.S. immigration-court protection against being returned to their countries of origin.
What is alleged to have happened on 11 September
Amnesty says police came to Hotel Bamy, where the men and other third-country deportees were being held, searched for phones and accused Soliman and Birhane of breaking a mirror. The organisation alleges officers put bags over their heads, struck their heads, backs and ribs and demanded to know where phones had been hidden. Separate witnesses told the Guardian that one man was pushed down stairs. Na Wetin Dey Happen could not independently verify those accounts.
Rights lawyers believe the arrests were reprisals for the men's contact with journalists and advocates. Amnesty says Soliman had shared videos showing alleged threats at the hotel, including an incident on 5 September in which an officer pointed a weapon at detainees. The reported mirror damage remains an accusation, and no publicly available charging document establishes that either man committed an offence.
The two men were taken to the Malabo gendarmerie station known as La Luna, Amnesty says. Its 18 September appeal states that they had not been informed of charges, were being held in an overcrowded cell in conditions the organisation described as inhumane and had been unable to speak with their lawyers. Amnesty called for their immediate release or prompt notification of any charges, together with unimpeded access to counsel.
A detention hotel and a $7.5 million arrangement
Their case grows from a wider third-country deportation programme. Amnesty says removals from the United States to Equatorial Guinea began in November 2025 after the two governments concluded a $7.5 million arrangement in October. It recorded at least six ICE flights through September 2026 carrying men and women of several nationalities, including people from Angola, Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Uganda and Senegal.
The Guardian reported that at least 66 people had been sent under the arrangement and that 29 remained at Hotel Bamy after Soliman and Birhane were taken away. The newspaper also reported complaints about restricted movement, missing medical care, lack of fresh clothes and phone confiscations. Those conditions are described by detainees and lawyers; Equatorial Guinea's government has not publicly supplied a detailed competing account.
The immigration orders require careful explanation. Protection from refoulement meant U.S. courts concluded the men should not be sent to Egypt or Eritrea because of the risks they faced there. It did not itself grant a general right to remain in the United States. The U.S. instead transferred them to a third country where, lawyers argue, they entered a new legal limbo without settled immigration status or a functioning route to asylum.
Protection from return did not end the danger
Amnesty says some people transferred to Equatorial Guinea have been pressured to accept return to their home countries or have been sent there. In May, United Nations experts urged Equatorial Guinea to prevent refoulement. In July, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights requested provisional measures barring further transfers to places where deportees risk death, torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, according to Amnesty's case summary.
That principle is central to the dispute: a state may not transfer a person to a place where there are substantial grounds for believing the person faces persecution or prohibited ill-treatment. Amnesty says neither Soliman nor Birhane can safely be returned to his country of origin. The organisation also says Equatorial Guinea lacks a formal system for determining refugee status and that asylum requests filed by U.S. deportees there had received no response by the time of its appeal.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the Guardian that its responsibility ends when a person leaves ICE custody and described Equatorial Guinea as a safe third country. A State Department spokesperson said the government would use lawful means to remove people without a right to remain in the United States, but did not answer the newspaper's specific questions about the alleged violence. The State Department's own travel advisory warns that arbitrary enforcement of local laws in Equatorial Guinea can lead to harassment and detention.
What governments have — and have not — answered
Equatorial Guinea's authorities had not publicly responded to the reported beatings, the men's access to counsel or the alleged retaliation when this article was published. The unanswered questions are therefore substantial: where the men are now held, whether formal charges exist, whether they have received medical care and whether an independent inquiry will examine police conduct. Until those answers emerge, the confirmed facts are the men's transfer dates and Amnesty's public appeal; the accounts of assault and motive remain attributed allegations requiring investigation.
