Hakeem al-Araibi: pawn in a brutal game of revenge
Thailand’s role in Hakeem al-Araibi’s ordeal — and the timing of the Red Notice against him — raises some troubling questions.
Looking thin and miserable, Hakeem al-Araibi fought to stay upright as he shuffled out of a prison bus in leg irons this week and into Bangkok’s Criminal Court.
The former Bahrain football team defender, who fled to Australia in 2014 after he was arrested and tortured for participating in pro-democracy rallies — only to be detained almost five years later on his honeymoon in Thailand on an illegally issued Interpol Red Notice — pleaded once again not to be returned to a regime he says is interested only in revenge.
By the end of the week, as concern mounted for the welfare of a 25-year-old man who has already endured so much, his parents in Bahrain issued a desperate appeal for help to prevent their son’s extradition to “where he has been subject to torture and ill-treatment”.
“As if the pain and bitterness of separation, the longing, worries and fears over the fate of our children who are abroad are not enough, we find ourselves faced with the arrest of our child by governments of countries that are supposed to respect human rights,” his parents wrote in a letter that reiterated their son’s innocence.
“The fact that our son Hakeem has spent more than two months in Thai prisons being treated unjustly, including being transported to court shackled and barefoot, is a crime committed by the government of Thailand against human rights.”
Thailand’s role in his ordeal, and how Bahrain’s Red Notice against al-Araibi was issued just days after he lodged travel details and documents with the Thai consulate in Melbourne, is increasingly under scrutiny.
Hakeem, his family, human rights activists and Bahraini exiles have warned he will be arrested, tortured, imprisoned, perhaps even killed, if he is returned to the tiny Gulf kingdom which hosts a critical US naval base.
For all Bahrain’s insistence that al-Araibi, a refugee and holder of an Australian protection visa, will be treated fairly, its recent history strongly suggests otherwise.
The regime’s dogged pursuit of one young player has shone an unwelcome spotlight on what’s been described as the “systematic” use of torture in Bahrain, its continuing human rights abuses and thirst for vengeance — all of which have remained largely under the public radar until now.
It has also sparked a global campaign for his release, and demands for greater scrutiny of football’s corrosive money politics. For a football-mad country, it seems odd Bahrain would not recognise an own goal when it kicks one.
Al-Araibi’s greatest crime was not the alleged vandalism of a police station — for which he says he was wrongly convicted and sentenced to 10 years’ jail — but his public criticism of Sheik Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, president of the Asian Football Confederation as well as vice-president (and aspiring president) of world soccer governing body FIFA.
The dissident campaign against Sheik Salman, a cousin of Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, lost him the 2016 election.
“The red line here is don’t cross any member of the royal family otherwise there will be consequences,” says Sayed Ahmed al-Wadaei of the UK-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, whose own extended family has been rounded up, tortured and jailed since he fled Bahrain in 2012.
Last September, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed deep concern over Bahrain’s harassment of civil society figures, and the “arrest, sexual assault and torture … of targeted individuals”.
Says al-Wadaei: “The biggest message from the al-Araibi case is to all Bahraini dissidents and critics who escape the country and think they’re immune to the consequences of the state. ‘We can trap you, we can be brutal’ — that’s the message.”
In early 2011, political tensions in Bahrain — a Gulf state connected to Saudi Arabia by a 25km causeway — over King Hamad’s failure to deliver promised democratic reforms peaked when tens of thousands of peaceful protesters gathered at the Pearl Roundabout in the capital, Manama. Authorities responded with brute force and called in back-up from Saudi Arabia. At least 20 people died in the crackdown, five from torture in detention. More than 1600 were rounded up, detained and tortured. In the months that followed, official committees hunted down pro-democracy supporters who had dared question the power of the royal family. One targeted doctors, another lawyers, and so on, but it was the athletes who some said bore the brunt of the fury as officers of the kingdom sought revenge, not just for the perceived betrayal of the state but petty sporting rivalries.
Sheik Salman was publicly named chair of a committee to identify sportsmen and women. He has denied all involvement in the witch-hunt that followed.
Ali Abdulemam, a well-known pro-democracy blogger and newspaper columnist who was arrested and tortured during the crackdown and now lives in exile, says many athletes found themselves targeted by minor royals who owned rival sports teams. “I know one footballer who was beaten by an officer because he scored two goals against his team, not because of any political activity,” he told Inquirer this week. “It was a moment of madness. There was a green light at that time for the security officers to do whatever they wanted as revenge.”
Al-Araibi was among 150 athletes rounded up. In several interviews since fleeing to Australia, he has described being blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated over the firebombing of a police station he says he had nothing to do with.
He has a convincing alibi. The bombing happened on the other side of the city at peak hour, 40 minutes after he played in a televised football match. A signed letter from his al-Shabab football club chairman (seen by Inquirer) confirms al-Araibi left the stadium on the team bus at 8pm — the time of the attack — and arrived at his team’s club house at 8.40pm.
Al-Araibi has described his beatings in detail: he was held down and beaten on the legs for 10-minute intervals over a period of three hours. He was detained for three months.
“They held me really tight, and one started to beat my legs really hard, saying: ‘You will not play soccer again. We will destroy your future’,” he told The New York Times in 2016.
His experience mirrors that of other athletes including the national team’s all-time record goal scorer, A’ala Hubail.
“One of the people who hit me said, ‘I’m going to break your legs’,” Hubail recounted in a 2011 documentary in which he criticised Sheik Salman. He fled to Jordan but was later allowed to return and recanted his criticism.
Al-Araibi has accused Sheik Salman of failing to prevent the torture of sportspeople he knew was happening, and of ignoring his own family’s entreaties to confirm his alibi. His lawyers told The New York Times in 2016 that the Bahrain Football Association did provide evidence to assist several footballers arrested in the roundup, but that he received no personal request from al-Araibi.
GRAPHIC: Letters from the Bahrain Football Association and Al-Shabab club
The latter was finally released on bail only to discover, while on tour in Qatar with the Bahrain side in late 2013, that he had been convicted in his absence. He escaped to Iran and eventually claimed asylum in Australia. By 2017 he had refugee status, was married and playing football for Melbourne’s Pascoe Vale club.
But on November 27 last year he was detained at Bangkok airport as he arrived with his wife for a delayed honeymoon.
The Interpol Red Notice, which should never have been issued against a refugee protected against refoulement to the country of persecution under international law, was withdrawn three days later. Yet he is still in detention while the courts consider Bahrain’s extradition request. Thai authorities say he will probably remain there until August.
GRAPHIC: The Interpol red notice
As details of al-Araibi’s case are pieced together, questions are being asked about the timing of the Red Notice and his subsequent arrest.
Al-Wadaei, who has been helping Al-Araibi with his case, says the footballer first applied for a visa in late September and was still submitting documents — refugee papers, proof of residency and flight details — in October.
On November 8, the day that Interpol added Hakeem al-Araibi’s name to its Red Notice list at Bahrain’s request, Thailand’s Melbourne consulate advised al-Araibi his visa was ready for collection.
Thailand’s immigration police chief Lieutenant General Surachate Hakparn has also revealed that Bahrain knew of al-Araibi’s travel itinerary before he left Australia and had asked for his arrest ahead of his arrival.
“The Bahraini government knew that he would be arriving in Thailand (on November 27) so they co-ordinated with Thailand’s permanent secretary of foreign affairs to detain him, pending documents sent from Bahrain,” Surachate told reporters in December.
“What’s now becoming clear is Bahrain had prior knowledge about his plans,” says al-Wadaei, adding there were two possible theories to explain that.
“Either Hakeem was under surveillance in Melbourne, or Thailand leaked his information to the Bahrain government.”
Bangkok has suggested a third. It says Australian Federal Police alerted both Thailand and Bahrain as al-Araibi and his wife were en route, and that Bahrain then asked for him to be detained, triggering an extradition process that rendered the Red Notice irrelevant.
Scott Morrison has written two letters to his Thai counterpart, Prayuth Chan-ocha, asking him to use his executive power to release and return al-Araibi to Australia. Thai prosecutors confirmed after last Monday’s hearing that the government had the power to intervene.
The Thai government seems impervious to Australia’s arguments that al-Araibi should never have been detained and that returning him to Bahrain would breach international human law.
The issue has deteriorated into an unhelpful diplomatic tit-for-tat, with the Thai foreign ministry this week complaining of being caught between “two countries competing for Mr Hakeem’s custody”.
“Thailand … would not have become involved in the issue had we not received the Red Notice alert from the Australian Interpol and the subsequent formal request by Bahrain for his arrest and extradition,” it said in a lengthy statement.
“It took several days … before the Australian authorities informed us that the Red Notice had been cancelled. By that time, legal proceedings in Thailand regarding Mr Hakeem had already started and could not be reversed.
“We therefore believe we have a legitimate right to urge Australia and Bahrain to talk to each other and find a mutually agreeable solution.”
Australia fired back, clarifying it was Bahrain — not Australia — that issued the Red Notice, but that it was reviewing procedures to ensure it never again alerted a country of a Red Notice arrival before first checking whether that person was entitled to protection.
“The Australian government has said unequivocally on many occasions that Hakeem al-Araibi should be returned to Australia, where he is a permanent resident with protected status, as soon as possible,” it added.
Human Rights Watch Australia director Elaine Pearson says there are “real questions about why Thailand is prioritising its relationship with the tiny kingdom of Bahrain over its longstanding relationship with Australia”.
“Australia prides itself on its soft-power’approach to Southeast Asia, but perhaps it is too soft. Clearly Bahrain is feeling bold enough to take its human rights abuses beyond its borders in pushing for extradition of Hakeem.”
Australian ties with Thailand are strong. Its two-way trade at almost $19 billion dwarfs that between Bahrain and Thailand ($US290m), and it has strong partnerships in counter-terrorism and regional security.
But ties between the kingdoms and royal families of Thailand and Bahrain are deep and opaque.
Al-Wadaei says it is widely understood in Bahrain that Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa has extensive Thai investments, though there is little hard evidence of that.
It has been reported Thailand’s late king Bhumibol and Sheik Khalifa, the Bahraini king’s uncle and prime minister since 1970, were partners in the Kempinski hotel group which owns more than 100 hotels globally.
Last December, Sheik Khalifa decreed Thai passport holders could enjoy 100 per cent ownership in retail commercial activity ahead of the opening this year of a multimillion-dollar Thai shopping mall in Bahrain.
Whether Thailand will pay a heavy price for its loyalty to Bahrain remains to be seen.
FIFA is under pressure to abide by its own human rights statutes and impose sanctions on Bahrain and Thailand, banning them from hosting international games, thanks to a campaign led by former Socceroos captain Craig Foster that has drawn support from some of the game’s biggest names.
It would be a crushing blow to soccer-mad Thailand, and another maddening provocation to autocratic Bahrain. Until this week, Sheik Salman was expected to take another tilt at the FIFA presidency, with the support of Middle East, African and Asian interests who would like to see FIFA’s power base shift from Europe.
But on Thursday FIFA announced that president Gianni Infantino would be the sole candidate for elections scheduled for June, suggesting al-Araibi’s case may have again cruelled Sheik Salman’s ambitions.
His detention may yet cause more damage. FIFPro, the global union representing 65,000 footballers, has vowed to campaign against Sheik Salman’s re-election as AFC chairman this April.
This week, Australia’s Olyroos under-23s became the first soccer team to boycott Thailand after it announced it was shifting a planned March training camp to another Asian nation.
But al-Wadaei says only when powerful bodies such as FIFA and the IOC impose “real sanctions and consequences” will Bahrain back down.
“The reputational damage might be great but the bigger game is the state of fear this will cause. I think the world is beginning to understand — from the murder of (Saudi journalist) Jamal Khashoggi — the lengths these regimes will go, yet it is not willing to impose consequences on these states.
“This episode will end the day Thailand and Bahrain believe it will not just cost them their reputations, but something more.”
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