[Eswatini] Court rules in favor of 4 men deported by the US to Africa and denied lawyer meetings for 9 months

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The Supreme Court in the African kingdom of Eswatini has ruled that four men sent there by the United States last July under the Trump administration’s third-country deportation program can finally meet with a lawyer after they were denied in-person legal counsel for nine months while held at a maximum-security prison.

A lower court had previously ruled that local lawyer Sibusiso Nhlabatsi, who is working on behalf of the men’s U.S.-based lawyers, could meet with them, but the Eswatini government immediately appealed that decision.

In a ruling delivered on Thursday, the Supreme Court dismissed arguments by Eswatini authorities that the deportees didn’t want to meet with Nhlabatsi, and that they had no right to legal counsel anyway because they had not been arrested or charged with a crime in Eswatini.