A former Bahrain international has claimed in a German documentary that FIFA presidential candidate Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa is lying about his knowledge of players being tortured in the Middle Eastern state.
Sheikh Salman is the front-runner to replace disgraced Sepp Blatter as president of world soccer’s governing body in today’s vote in Zurich, Switzerland.
The 50-year-old is a senior member of the Bahrain royal family and has substantial support amongst soccer’s power brokers, but human rights groups have accused him of being involved in the arrest and torture of soccer players involved in the 2011 civil protests when he was head of the Bahrain Football Association.
Sheikh Salman says the accusations against him are “false, nasty lies” and has signed a pledge to end human rights abuses and corruption in sport, but former Bahrain international Hakeem al-Oraibi claims Sheikh Salman headed a committee which persecuted him and his teammates, among others, for their part in the 2011 protests and must have known that they were tortured.
The central defender, who now plays for Australian second-tier side Green Gully in Melbourne, described what happened after his arrest.
“They spent three hours hitting me hard on my legs, while saying: ‘We will break your bones, we will destroy your future, you will never play football again with these legs,’” he told WDR program Sport Inside.
The player fled his home country and is seeking political asylum in Australia, but a court in Bahrain sentenced him to 10 years in jail in his absence.
He says he was accused of attacking a police station at a time when he was playing in a televised match.
He insists Sheikh Salman knew about the beatings both he and his teammates suffered.
The German documentary makers claim Bahrain’s state press agency BNA put out three separate reports confirming Sheikh Salman was the head of the investigation committee, tasked with finding those who took part in the protests.
Sheikh Salman’s lawyers, based in London, denied the committee ever existed when confronted by the WDR program.
“Sheikh Salman was responsible for the football players, for the national team — how can it be that he didn’t know anything about it?” al-Oraibi said. “I am an example of it and I have evidence. What Sheikh Salman claims is a big lie.”
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB