KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTING —- Pressure from the international sports community has been ramped up further today over the detention in Thailand of the former Bahrain international footballer Hakeem Al-Araibi.

The 25-year-old, who holds refugee status in Australia, unwisely took a holiday last year in a country which is not a signatory to the relevant United Nations conventions and has a poor record on immigration issues.

Bahrain is seeking his extradition to fulfil a jail term imposed in his absence for criminal damage to a police station. Al-Araibi, who has said he was playing in a televised football match at the time of the incident, fears he will be tortured as a consequence of his actions in support of the quickly-repressed pro-democracy demonstrations of 2011.

Craig Foster . . . speaking up for Al-Araibi

Al-Araibi has claimed that a central figure in the rounding up of sports men and women was Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, a member of the governing royal family who is now president of the Asian Football Confederation and a vice-president of FIFA, the world governing body.

Sheikh Salman has denied all allegations of involvement.

FIFA has urged the Thai government to release Al-Araibi as have the Australian government and its sports community.

More protests

At the weekend further voices against the Thai action were raised by the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach and by Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan, head of that country’s football federation and a former candidate for the FIFA presdency.

Today a petition bearing 50,000 signatures in support of Al-Araibi was delivered to FIFA secretary-general Fatma Samoura in Zurich by former Australia national team captain Craig Foster with the support of world players’ organisations.

Foster said afterwards: “This matter has become an absolute emergency. The human rights policy of FIFA, we feel, is an incredibly important tool in this situation and we’re delighted that FIFA this morning have demonstrated again their commitment to ensuring that every stakeholder in football will apply the absolute maximum leverage and of course that includes the global governing body.

“[Over] the next five days we want to see absolute progress and that means Hakeem al-Araibi being released and we are going to continue to work with FIFA to ensure that occurs on behalf of the football community in Australia.”

Al-Araibi was granted refugee status in 2014 by Australia where he has been playing for semi-professional Pascoe Vale Football Club in Melbourne.

A statement issued by players’ body FIFPro said: “After a week-long visit to Bangkok in which he met Mr Al-Araibi and senior Thai and Australian government officials, Mr Foster will unveil details of obligations before football authorities who are under increasing international pressure to intervene in what is a major litmus test of FIFA’s recently-adopted human rights policy.

“Given updates obtained on the ground in Bangkok, the matter is now extremely urgent.”

AFC equivocation

Al-Araibi’s supporters consider the response of the AFC to have been pathetic in the extreme, given that Australia, Bahrain and Thailand are all  its member associations.

The AFC has issued several luke-warm statements of general support for FIFA’s approach but has refrained from any sort of condemnatory statement. It stated last week that Sheikh Salman had recused himself from issues within the Gulf region to avoid concerns of any conflict of interest.

A call from the World Players Association wants Sheik Salman disqualified from office if Al-Araibi is ultimately returned to Bahrain.

The AFC has assigned responsibility for the issue to its senior vice-president, Praful Patel.

Bahrain’s authorities remain intransigent.

The Interior Minister, General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa (no relation to the AFC president) said that Al-Araibi had every right to follow the legal process but that “external interference in the internal affairs of Bahrain is unacceptable.”

#################