US deportees to Equatorial Guinea were arrested and beaten by police, lawyers say

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 Associated Press 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 ...