Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) welcomes the decision of releasing the Bahraini football player, Hakeem Al-Araibi, detained by the Thai authorities, after Bahrain dropped extradition proceedings.
Bahrain Center for Human Rights considers his release a result of cooperation between human rights organizations, governments and the football community in the past two months. Therefore, BCHR thanks Australia, people and government, and all other countries that contribute in his release.
BCHR: “We have worked hard with many members of human rights organizations around the world to reach this result”.
The case of the 25 year-old player who was a refugee in Australia since 2014, and a member of football club in Melbourne had become widely known. He was detained by Thai authorities in last November at Bangkok airport when coming from Australia to spend the honeymoon with his wife. Al-Araibi’s detention was in response to an international arrest warrant requested by Bahrain.
The Thai judiciary began to consider the Bahraini authorities request to extradite him to carry out a previous sentence of 10 years imprisonment. The charges were a result of participating in the “Arab Spring” events in 2011 that included Bahrain, which the player completely denies.
