Article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
The group believes Ahmed Soliman and Samson Birhane were targeted by police in Equatorial Guinea for speaking out about poor treatment in the hotel they were detained in following their deportation.
As Amnesty International warned that two men are now at risk of being tortured in detention in Equatorial Guinea, where the Trump administration deported them earlier this year under one of several secretive deals, US. Rep. Adelita Grijalva said that the “ultimate responsibility lies with” the White House, which sent the men “into harm’s way.”
The human rights group issued an urgent appeal, calling on supporters to send letters to the vice president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, saying that that Ahmed Soliman, an Egyptian national, and Samson Birhane, who is from Eritrea, were “beaten and violently taken by police officers from the Hotel Bamy in Malabo,” the capital of Equatorial Guinea.
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They had been “arbitrarily” held at the hotel along with dozens of other people since US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent them there on deportation flights earlier this year. Soliman and Birhane had protection from refoulement to their countries of origin from US immigration courts, but President Donald Trump’s administration has arranged with five governments, through direct payments of tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money, to send hundreds of migrants to countries where they have never lived—many with records of human rights abuses.
Soliman has publicly spoken out against their arbitrary detention, and international media recently published a video showing a police officer at Hotel Bamy pointing a weapon at him and another man.
Last Friday, days after the video went public, said Amnesty, Soliman and Birhane were “targeted” by police, who arrived at the hotel and took them away briefly.
Amnesty continued in its letter and call to action:
Later during the day police officers went back to the hotel, bringing Ahmed Soliman and Samson Birhane back with them, who had their heads covered with bags tied with a rope. Police officers beat them in their heads, backs, and ribs with their elbows, knees, and guns, asking them where they hid the phones. They pushed one of the men down the stairs of the hotel and said to others that they may never see Ahmed Soliman and Samson Birhane again.
The group wrote that the men were taken “the Malabo gendarmery station known as ‘La Luna’” and were accused of breaking a mirror at the hotel.
“Since then, they have not been informed of the charges against them, nor allowed to speak to their lawyers, and are held in an overcrowded police cell, in inhumane conditions,” reads the sample letter. “I am concerned that they are at heightened risk of torture.”
The New York Times reported that a lawyer who has been able to get some information about Soliman and Birhane’s condition said they have been denied food and are “covered in bruises.”
“The authorities must immediately release them, inform them of any charges against them, and allow them unimpeded access to counsel,” said Amnesty International.
Officials in the Trump administration, said Grijalva (D-Ariz.), “need to take responsibility and demand Ahmed’s immediate release.”
Article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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