A group of West African nationals deported from the United States to Ghana earlier this month have filed a lawsuit against the Ghanaian government for unlawful detention. Lawyers representing the deportees report they are still being held in a military camp near Accra, even though there are no formal charges against them and the authorities say they are being returned to their home countries.
Fourteen people from various countries in West Africa landed in Ghana on 6 September, after the government in Accra agreed to take in third-country nationals expelled from the US.
Ghanaian authorities say all the deportees have since been sent back to their countries of origin. But in a lawsuit filed this week, lawyers for 11 of the migrants claim they remain in detention in Ghana.
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It alleges that Ghana is in breach of its constitution and international treaties in holding the deportees without charge, and demands their release - as well as their right not to be sent to their home countries where their life is at risk.
Conflicting accounts
At the request of the deportees' families and their lawyers in the US, a Ghanaian law firm, Merton & Everett, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit for unlawful detention against Ghana's attorney general, the chief of staff of the armed forces and comptroller general of the immigration service.
Speaking to RFI, the lawyers said that they are satisfied, having cross-checked information provided by the deportees, that their clients are indeed in Ghana. They believe they are detained at Bundase military camp, 70 km from Accra, under armed guard.
Information about the deportees has been difficult to come by, according to Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a lawyer at Merton & Everett.
"We reached out to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who insisted that all of them have been repatriated. We contacted the Ghana Armed Forces, which said they have no idea about the issue and said they were not holding the people," he told RFI's Victor Cariou in Accra.
The Associated Press reported it had reached three of the group by phone this week, and that they described being held in "terrible" conditions.
Risky returns
The West African nationals, ten men and four women from Nigeria, Liberia, Togo, Gambia and Mali, arrived in Ghana on a US military cargo plane, having been taken from their cells in an immigration detention centre in Louisiana in the middle of the night.
According to court documents seen by RFI, three of the deportees were removed to their countries of origin between 6 and 10 September.
In a statement filed to the Accra court, a deportee from Gambia said he was place on a flight back home on 10 September, accompanied by two Ghanaian immigration officials. He was then released, but is living in hiding because of his bisexuality, which is punishable by law in Gambia.
"I'd won protection from being returned to Gambia under the Convention against Torture. I told them [Ghanaian immigration officials] that I wanted to stay in Ghana for my safety," he testified.
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Another deportee from Nigeria also declared that he feared for his life if he was forced to return. Married to a US citizen, he said he was a politician and had been beaten up by political rivals and tortured by the police before he fled his country.
"If I go back to Nigeria, I will be tortured and possibly killed," he stated.
He claims that neither US immigration officers nor Ghanaian and Nigerian officials heeded his efforts to explain the potential danger.
"They told us they did not care and that we will be sent back to Nigeria anyway," he said.
Out of US hands
Lawyers in the US also filed a lawsuit on behalf of five of the deportees, asking a judge to immediately halt deportations to their countries of origin.
Yet federal judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that, now the deportees are in Ghanaian custody, her court's "hands are tied".
In a decision delivered on Monday, she expressed concern about what awaited them: "[The court] is aware of the dire consequences plaintiffs face if they are repatriated. And it is alarmed and dismayed by the circumstances under which these removals are being carried out, especially in light of the government's cavalier acceptance of plaintiffs' ultimate transfer to countries where they face torture and persecution."
Ghana's foreign affairs minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, insisted that deportees had opted to return to their home countries of their own volition.
"The choice is theirs, really," he told Channel One TV on Thursday. "For 90 days, if they want to stay, they can stay but so far all of them have indicated that they want to go back after some time and we've been facilitating that."
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More deportees to come
According to the minister, another 40 West African deportees are expected in Ghana in the next few days.
Ghana is the fifth African country to reach a deportation deal with President Donald Trump's administration, after agreeing earlier this month to accept fellow West Africans expelled from the US.
Ghana's opposition has demanded the immediate suspension of the pact, which it says should have been submitted to parliament for approval.
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Defending the deal to journalists on Monday, the foreign minister insisted that his government's decision to accept West African deportees from the US "is grounded purely on humanitarian principle and pan-African solidarity".
"It is important to stress that Ghana has not received and does not seek any financial compensation or material benefit in relation to this understanding," Ablakwa said.
Arguing that the deal was designed to "offer temporary refuge when needed", he rebutted critics' claims that Accra was aligning itself with the anti-immigration administration in Washington.
He said: "This should not be misconstrued as an endorsement of the immigration policies of the Trump administration."
