(Beirut) – FIFA should publicly call on the Qatari authorities to ensure a fair trial for the detained former employee of Qatar’s World Cup organizers, Human Rights Watch and FairSquare said in a letter to FIFA on November 19, 2021.
The employee, Abdullah Ibhais, who is appealing a five-year prison sentence handed down in April 2021 for offenses including bribery and misuse of funds, was taken into custody on November 15. A family member said he has been on hunger strike since his detention.
“Increasingly it appears that Abdullah Ibhais is in jail because of suspicion and paranoia, not any evidence of wrongdoing,” said Nick McGeehan, director of FairSquare. “It is probable he will remain there until FIFA accepts a basic level of responsibility for his well-being and demands that he gets the fair trial that he deserves.”
An analysis of a Qatari police report and witness statements show that the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, Ibhais’s employer and FIFA’s partner in Qatar, handed over highly sensitive and apparently unsubstantiated and vague allegations that Ibhais was engaged in activities aimed at “harming the state or its security.” Ibhais was initially arrested on November 12, 2019, and told Human Rights Watch and FairSquare on September 22 that interrogators used the subsequent initiation of a State Security investigation to coerce him into confessing to the lesser charge of bribery and misuse of state funds. This confession, which Ibhais retracted in court,...
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