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 were initially held with a larger group 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.

After their arrest, Soliman and Berhane were transferred from the hotel to the La Luna police station where they are now being held. They have not been able to speak to a lawyer.

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 deter immigration.

U.S. judges had protected most of those deported to Equatorial Guinea from being returned to their countries of origin. Nevertheless, 12 people have been sent back to their countries of origin, according to their lawyers, including four Ethiopians earlier this month.

Those who remain in detention at the Bamy Hotel have faced violence from authorities, who tried to confiscate everyone's phones, their lawyers said.

 Over the past months, we have observed escalating cases of police violence,  said Isabella Mosselmans, director of the Global Strategic Litigation Council, an organization which is part of a coalition representing the individuals detained in Malabo.  On July 31, masked Equatorial Guinean poli

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