Human rights organisations have reacted with alarm to the Bahraini royal Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa becoming the new favourite to succeed Sepp Blatter as Fifa president, citing his family’s role in the brutal suppression of the country’s pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011.
Sheikh Salman, the Asian Football Confederation president, is expected to announce his candidature early next week after agreeing to fill the void created by the suspension of the Uefa president, Michel Platini, over an alleged “disloyal payment” from Blatter, who has also been suspended by world football’s governing body. Sheikh Salman has received backing from football associations around the world, including many in Platini’s Uefa stronghold.
But human rights organisations have reacted furiously, resurrecting claims that Sheikh Salman was involved in identifying athletes involved in pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011, some of whom were then allegedly imprisoned and tortured. “Since the peaceful anti-government protests of 2011, which the authorities responded to with brutal and lethal force, the al-Khalifa family have overseen a campaign of torture and mass incarceration that has decimated Bahrain’s pro-democracy movement,” said Nicholas McGeehan, the Gulf researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“If a member of Bahrain’s royal family is the cleanest pair of hands that Fifa can find, then the organisation would appear to have the shallowest and least ethical pool of talent in world sport.”
Sheikh Salman, who has always denied those allegations, will be presented as a “clean skin” candidate, having been elected to the Fifa executive committee only in 2013 and so not tarnished by the decades of allegations of corruption and malpractice that have built up at its door.
Sheikh Salman is believed to have already secured expressions of support from Europe, Asia, Africa and South America as it has become increasingly clear Platini is highly unlikely to make it on to the ballot paper by the 26 October deadline.
The Football Association on Friday suspended its support for Platini’s bid to become Fifa president after a briefing from his lawyers at Uefa’s headquarters in Nyon. The FA has been under huge pressure to reconsider its position after the Uefa president was questioned by the Swiss attorney general as somewhere “between a witness and an accused person” over a £1.35m payment received from the departing Fifa president, Blatter, in 2011. As the Guardian revealed this week no written contract exists for the £1.35m payment, which relates to the period between January 1999 and June 2002 when Platini acted as a paid adviser to Blatter. Blatter confirmed as much on Friday, describing the payment as a“gentleman’s agreement”.
