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.
Update, 5 November 2026. A.M.A.S. v. Mullin, in the federal court in Arizona, is the case of an Egyptian man the United States sent to Equatorial Guinea; the court refers to him by his initials. On 6 October 2026 the court recorded, as unrebutted by the government, that “On September 5, 2026, police aimed rifles at Plaintiff while he knelt with his hands raised, and a plainclothes officer shouted, ‘shoot him!’” It declared that his removal to Equatorial Guinea, without notice of the country or an opportunity to raise a claim against removal there, violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and ordered the government to facilitate his return. In orders of 23, 27 and 29 October the court required the government to report on each step of that return. Parole for him was approved on 26 October, and on 28 October an ICE officer declared that a flight from Malabo through Casablanca to Washington Dulles had been ticketed for 4 November. At a hearing on 2 November, government counsel read into the record an order of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “staying this Court’s Order dated October 23, 2026”, and the court adjourned without further orders. Sources: A.M.A.S. v. Mullin, order of 6 October 2026, pp. 3 to 4 and 20 · ICE declaration, 22 October 2026 · order of 23 October 2026 · order of 27 October 2026 · ICE declaration, 28 October 2026 · order of 29 October 2026 · minutes of the hearing of 2 November 2026
Reuters obtained and reviewed the footage. It states that it could not independently verify the events that preceded the confrontation, and that caveat travels with this account.
Checked 12 September 2026Watch on Reuters’ own channel
Reuters obtained and reviewed the footage, and publishes it on its own channel. It is embedded above. The written wire story is linked below.
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, according to the lawyer Meredyth Yoon and two of the people held there, and reports, citing Third Country Deportation Watch, that fifty-three people were 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. Six of the people held there arrived by way of Liberia, and that is on the Liberia guide.
Correction, 5 November 2026: this report said that Reuters counts fifty-three people sent to Equatorial Guinea. Reuters gives that figure as Third Country Deportation Watch’s, and the text above now says so. It also said that five of the people held at the hotel had arrived by way of Liberia. Human Rights Watch reports that the flight of 20 August 2026 “included six additional people who refused to disembark in Liberia and were then taken to Equatorial Guinea”, and Third Country Deportation Watch also gives six; the text now says six. Sources: Reuters, 8 September 2026 (syndicated copy) · HRW, To Scare People, p. 88 · Third Country Deportation Watch, Liberia