More Soccer-related Arrests in Bahrain


The footballing son of an Iraqi soccer coach and a prominent sports journalist are among up to 200 sportspeople detained in Bahrain’s crackdown on anti-government protesters, according to press reports.

Iraqi coach Abdelamir Naji told French news agency Agence France Press that his 16-year old son, Zulfiqar, who trains with Bahraini al-Mouharrak football club's junior team was arrested at his home early Friday.

Naji, who was recently elected as a member of the board of Iraqi club Al Zawra said his son was not involved in politics and only interested in music and football.

"I have asked the club to intervene but they have not done much. I do not understand what is happening because I thought I had a good relationship with Bahrain,” Naji said
Naji played with Iraq's Al-Zawra club from 1978 to 1990 before coaching various Bahraini teams, including Al-Mouharrak, Al-Itifaq, Al-Ittihad and Al-Badiyah.

Iraqi relations have deteriorated sharply with six oil-rich monarchies of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council have deteriorated in the wake of the Sunni Muslim-led Bahraini government’s brutal crackdown on the predominantly Shiite Muslim protesters. Bahrain's two airlines have stopped flights to majority Shiite as well as to Iran and Lebanon, which has a large Shiite minority.

Bahraini sports clubs earlier dismissed at least 12 sports people and executives, including two of the country’s top soccer players, because they participated in anti-government demonstrations. The dismissals are widely believed to have occurred at the behest of the government.

Iran’s Ahlul Bayt News Agency reported Faisal Hayat, a sports journalist for the Bahrain’s Albilad newspaper know for his soccer coverage was among the more recent arrests in Bahrain. It said a picture of Hayat was broadcast on a Bahrain television program that attacked participants in the protests.

The agency quoted a statement by Bahrain Olympic Committee chairman Nasser Al-Khalifa as saying: “...Bahrain is an island with no escape passage, everybody who interfered in these issues will be punished and everybody who took a stand (supporting the regime) will be awarded. The people who stood with or against the king are well-known to us.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Intellectual honesty in Israel & Palestine produces radically different outcomes

Image
  Just published! By James M. Dorsey To watch a video version of this story or listen to an audio podcast click here . Thank you for your support and loyalty. Intellectual honesty is a rare commodity in the divide between Israelis and Palestinians. It is even rarer with the rise of Jewish ultra-nationalism and a generation of Israelis and Palestinians nurtured on prejudiced, biased, and often supremacist perceptions of the other. The irony is that historically, it was far-right militants, and currently, it is fringe left-wing intellectuals who displayed intellectual honesty, even if their conclusions differ radically. With few exceptions, intellectual honesty has long been lost on the Israeli right and left. What intellectual honesty survives is posited in fringe pockets of the left that propagate a paradigm cultural change on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide that goes against the grain of mainstream Israeli and Palestinian thinking and, in today’s fog of war,...
Read more

Pakistan caught in the middle as China’s OBOR becomes Saudi-Iranian-Indian battleground

Image
By James M. Dorsey Pakistani General Raheel Sharif walked into a hornet’s nest when he stepped off a private jet in Riyadh two weeks ago to take command of a Saudi-led, 41-nation military alliance. Things have gone from bad to worse since. General Shareef had barely landed when Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dashed the Pakistani’s hopes to include Iran in the alliance that nominally was created to fight terrorism rather than confront Iran. The general’s hopes were designed to balance Pakistan’s close alliance with Saudia Arabia with the fact that it shares a volatile border with Iran and is home to the world’s second largest Shiite Muslim community. General Sharif’s ambition had already been rendered Mission Impossible before he landed with Saudi Arabia charging that Iran constitutes the world’s foremost terrorist threat . In a recent interview with the Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting television network, Prince Mohammed, who also serves a...
Read more

Israeli & Palestinian war crimes? Yes. Genocide? Maybe. A talk with Omer Bartov

Image
  To watch a video version of this story on YouTube please click  here. An audio podcast is available on Soundcloud. Hi, and welcome to the Turbulent World with me James M. Dorsey, as your host. Words matter. No more so than in legal settings. Genocide is the word most associated with Israel's more than one-month-long assault on Gaza. In response to the October 7 Hamas attack against Israel, in which at least 1,200, mostly civilian, Israelis were killed. Genocide and Holocaust scholars, including those who believe that Israel has and is committing war crimes in its assault are divided about whether Israeli actions amount to genocide. Even so, they warn that Israeli actions could lead to genocide, if it not already has. What is certain is that optics streaming out of Gaza of the destruction and the plight of innocent Palestinian civilians, including large numbers of children and babies, explain the popular use of the term genocide when discussing the Israeli assa...
Read more