Grievance filed to African Fee on Human and Peoples’ Rights challenges controversial expulsion follow.
Printed On 5 Jun 2026
A world coalition of attorneys has filed a lawsuit with a high African human rights physique in search of to dam deportations to Equatorial Guinea from the US.
The lawsuit filed on Friday towards Equatorial Guinea on the African Fee on Human and Peoples’ Rights particularly targets a so-called “third-country” settlement between the West African nation and the administration of US President Donald Trump.
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Below the coverage, the US can deport to Equatorial Guinea people who can’t safely be despatched to their residence nations. The follow has been broadly condemned for sending deportees to nations with dismal rights data the place they haven’t any ties and infrequently don’t converse the language.
The lawsuit was introduced on behalf of 14 deportees. They included some nonetheless being held in Equatorial Guinea underneath situations “amounting to arbitrary and indefinite detention”, based on the indictment.
Six of these represented within the grievance had already been forcibly repatriated from Equatorial Guinea throughout the final week, regardless of expressing worry of persecution or torture, based on the human rights teams representing them.
Three of these had been despatched again to Equatorial Guinea after their residence nations refused to just accept them. Legal professionals mentioned that they had misplaced contact with the opposite three.
The teams included the US-based teams Asian Individuals Advancing Justice, International Strategic Litigation Council and EG Justice, together with Gambia’s Institute for Human Rights and Improvement in Africa and the Tanzania-based Pan African Legal professionals Union.
The grievance asks that the fee, which assesses rights compliance with the African Constitution, to droop additional repatriations and assure that deportees have entry to attorneys, amongst different provisional measures.
The Gambia-based fee might hear the case or refer it to the African Court docket on Human and Peoples’ Rights, primarily based in Tanzania.
About 32 individuals are thought to have been deported to Equatorial Guinea since final yr, based on AFP, however the complete is unknown.
The US State Division in its 2024 human rights report, cited “credible stories” of “torture or merciless, inhuman, or degrading therapy or punishment” in Equatorial Guinea, amongst different “important human rights points”.
The Trump administration, which has overseen a mass deportation drive, has defended “third nation” deportations as lawful and a part of a method “to finish unlawful and mass immigration and bolster America’s border safety”.
