On Saturday 5 September 2026 armed national police drew and cocked weapons on people held at the Bamy Hotel in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. Every one of them had been transferred there by the United States. It was the second such incident at the same hotel in five weeks.
Reuters obtained and reviewed footage taken inside the hotel. Its report is not embedded here because Reuters publishes no embeddable copy, and the Coalition does not treat a social media re-upload as a source.
Reuters’ own page could not be retrieved. The wire text was read in full in a syndicated copy, and that copy is what is linked, so a reader sees the same words the Coalition read: the Reuters story as syndicated by The Business Standard. Checked 11 September 2026.
What Reuters reports. The confrontation began when a Cuban man asked for the return of his mobile telephone, which had been confiscated. He wanted it to reach his relatives and his lawyer. One man had been without his for about a fortnight. Officers refused to call the director in charge.
Ahmed Soliman, an Egyptian, one of three people who agreed to be named after the earlier raid of 31 July, described what followed: “They cocked their guns, took it off of safety, pointed their guns at me telling me to get on my knees.” He also said, of the people standing with him, “We were not rioting. We were not protesting. We just were demanding our human rights.”
Reuters puts the number then held at the hotel at thirty-one, and counts fifty-three people sent to Equatorial Guinea between November 2025 and July 2026, from eleven African countries and from Georgia, Jamaica, Brazil and Cuba. The Department of Homeland Security told Reuters the administration is “utilizing all lawful options”. Equatorial Guinea did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. Reuters states that it could not independently verify the events that preceded the confrontation, and that caveat travels with this account.
Twice in five weeks, at the same hotel, firearms were pointed at people charged with nothing. On both occasions the trigger was somebody asking to contact a lawyer, or objecting to being stopped from doing so.
The dated record for this state, including the raid of 31 July and what is known of the arrangement under which these people were sent, is on the Equatorial Guinea guide. Five of the people held there arrived by way of Liberia, and that is on the Liberia guide.