Ghana returns US-deported West Africans amid torture concerns

By Nkiruka Nnorom, with bureau report

Eleven West African nationals deported by the United States to Ghana person been returned to their location countries, contempt fears they could look torture, persecution oregon inhumane treatment.

The group, who arrived successful Ghana with 3 different US deportees, had filed a suit to enactment their deportation, but erstwhile it came to tribunal connected Tuesday, their lawyer said they had been removed implicit the weekend, and the suit was truthful irrelevant. 

“We person to pass the tribunal that the persons whose quality rights we are seeking to enforce were each deported implicit the weekend,” their lawyer, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, told the tribunal Tuesday astatine a virtual hearing.

“This is precisely the wounded we were trying to prevent,” helium said of the information concerns of the deportees.

The suit had argued that, astatine least, 8 of the deportees successful question had been granted extortion by US migration judges against deportation to their location countries owed to information concerns.

The radical included 4 Nigerians, 3 Togolese, 2 Malians, 1 Liberian and 1 Gambian. Six of them are present successful Togo, portion the whereabouts of the different 5 is unknown, their lawyer said.

Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama told reporters this period his authorities had agreed to instrumentality successful nationals from different West African countries who were being deported from the US nether President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown.

The Ghanaian authorities had defended accepting the deportees, saying that their determination to instrumentality successful West Africa deportees was connected humanitarian grounds, alternatively than an endorsement of Trump’s migration policy.

Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, had pushed backmost connected disapproval that the determination was an endorsement of US President Donald Trump’s migration policies, saying Ghana accepted the third-country deportees “purely connected humanitarian grounds.”

At a property briefing successful the capital, Accra connected Monday, Ablakwa said Ghana did not person immoderate fiscal compensation from the US implicit the deportation.

“We should alternatively beryllium seen arsenic a state that wants to look retired for its chap Africans, that is wherefore we made it wide to the Americans that we volition not judge $1,” the curate said of the rationale down the government’s decision.

Nigeria’s authorities said it was not briefed astir its nationals being sent to Ghana and that antecedently it had received Nigerians deported straight from the US.

The station Ghana returns US-deported West Africans amid torture concerns appeared archetypal connected Vanguard News.