Thailand frees refugee soccer player
HONG KONG • Thailand freed a refugee Bahraini soccer player detained for the past three months after a court dropped his case Monday, allowing him to return to Australia instead of being extradited to Bahrain, where he feared for his life. Hakeem al-Araibi, who has refugee status in Australia, was detained in November when he arrived in Bangkok for his honeymoon after Bahrain issued a warrant for his arrest. Thai authorities said they were acting on a Interpol “red notice” that has since been invalidated. Such a notice cannot be filed by a government against a refugee fleeing persecution from that country. On Monday, Chachom Akabin, director of the international affairs division of the Thai attorney general’s office, told reporters that Bahrain no longer wanted to take legal action against Araibi, so his office dropped the case.
Araibi was released from prison shortly afterward, and Thai officials said he would fly out Monday night. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, after earlier criticizing Thai authorities’ handling of the case, said Monday evening, “We greatly respect the process that they’ve had to work through, and we greatly appreciate their listening to the issues that have been raised by our government and many others who have raised this case.
“As prime minister, I’m pleased Hakeem is coming home, and I’ll be pleased to see him at home when that occurs,” Morrison said. Araibi, who plays for the Pascoe Vale Football Club in Melbourne, fled to Australia in 2014 after authorities in Bahrain put him under investigation in connection with the vandalizing of a police station, despite the fact that he appeared in a televised football match when the crime occurred. He was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison. Australia in 2017 granted asylum to Araibi, who has maintained that he would be tortured or worse if he returned to Bahrain.
In a release on Monday, Bahrain’s state news agency said the country’s Foreign Ministry took “note of the halt in legal proceedings” to have him extradited. But the agency also wrote that the “guilty verdict against Mr. al-Araibi remains in place” and that the “Kingdom of Bahrain reaffirms its right to pursue all necessary legal actions against Mr. al-Araibi.” “The decision to issue an international arrest warrant stems from Mr. al-Araibi’s decision to flee while awaiting trial,” the state news agency wrote. Bahrain continues to face fierce criticism from human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch’s director of global initiatives, Minky Worden, wrote on Saturday that the Bahraini request to extradite Araibi represented “naked political persecution.”
Rights groups said the case is part of a broader crackdown on dissidents.