Overview
- The complaint was filed Friday with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on behalf of 14 people the U.S. sent to Equatorial Guinea between November 2025 and April 2026.
- Advocates ask the Commission to order Equatorial Guinea to suspend further deportations and onward transfers and to grant immediate access to lawyers and medical care for those detained.
- Rights lawyers say six of the 14 were forcibly returned from Equatorial Guinea last week to countries where they had said they feared persecution and that three were later sent back to Equatorial Guinea when their home states would not accept them.
- The filing says some deportees are held in conditions that amount to arbitrary and indefinite detention and that legal and medical access has been denied, leaving some effectively stateless or unreachable.
- Washington has defended the removals as lawful and part of its immigration strategy, while advocates point to opaque bilateral payments including a reported $7.5 million deal with Equatorial Guinea and seek Commission pressure or referral to the Africa Court to change the practice.