The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Soccer fans and youth groups denounce the military-backed government and deposed president Morsi By James M. Dorsey Multiple conflicts between Egypt’s military-backed government and the country’s foremost soccer clubs that pit militant soccer fans against both Egypt’s autocratic leaders and club managers could force world soccer governing body FIFA to suspend Egypt. The disputes reflect the broader crisis that has shipwrecked Egypt’s transition from autocracy to a politically more liberal society following mass anti-government demonstrations in 2011 that forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office. Militant soccer fans played a key role in the toppling of Mr. Mubarak and resistance to subsequent military rule. In Egypt’s latest twists and turns, sports minister and former national soccer team player Taher Abou Zeid has spotlighted the Middle East and North Africa’s incestuous relationship between sports and politics that FIFA largely chooses ...

Aziz Yildirim: Culprit, Pawn or Victim? By James M. Dorsey When Aziz Yildirim, the head of Turkey’s foremost soccer club, Fenerbahce SK, denounced this week an appeals court decision upholding his conviction in a massive match fixing scandal, he drew a parallel with a construction-related corruption scandal that is rocking the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and pitting the country’s foremost Islamist factions against one another. Mr. Yildirim’s comparison stands on strong ground despite the fact that most experts on Turkish soccer as well as fans, including those of Fenerbahce, concede that Turkish football is thoroughly corrupt and that match fixing is a fact of life. Mr. Yildirim was sentenced to six years and three months in prison and is barred from serving as a club official. He has one last chance to appeal which would allow him to remain in office until he has exhausted his options. In a statement following the court decision, Mr. Yildirim ...

Singapore court overturns order to disclose sources James M. Dorsey at Play the Game 2013. Photo: Thomas Søndergaard / Play the Game  In September last year, a Singaporean court ordered journalist and blogger James M. Dorsey to reveal his sources for a report he did on an audit of the connection between Mohammed bin Hammam and World Sports Group (WSG). Dorsey appealed the order to the Singaporean Court of Appeal, who had it overturned. The Singapore Court of Appeal has issued a judgment outlining the grounds of the decision to overturn the disclosure of sources order issued on the Singapore-based journalist and blogger James M. Dorsey by a Singapore court. WSG initiated proceedings after Dorsey disclosed details of a PricewaterhouseCoopers report revealing payments to bin Hammam, quoted sources close to the AFC questioning the WSG contract and revealed that Malaysian police had opened an investigation into the theft of documents related to one of the payments. WSG as...

Egypt charter opens road for Sisi but youths alienated By  Mona Salem and Jay Deshmukh 5 hours ago . View gallery . . . Cairo (AFP) - The approval of Egypt's constitution bolsters the powerful army chief but a large number of youths who helped topple two presidents within three years shunned the vote on the new charter. Sisi led the overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July following massive protests against his one-year rule, which came after an uprising in 2011 toppled his predecessor Hosni Mubarak.Egyptian voters have approved the Tuesday-Wednesday referendum by 98.1 percent, officials announced Saturday, and the results are seen as nod to General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to run for president. Youth movements at the forefront of protests that ended the rules of Morsi and Mubarak hardly objected when the military-installed authorities launched a deadly crackdown on Morsi's supporters. ...

By James M. Dorsey If Israeli soccer pitches are any indication, Israeli attitudes towards Palestinians do not bode well for US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East peace efforts. The story echoing from the pitches is one of racism, racial superiority, bigotry, double standards and little sincere effort to address a key issue that undermines Israel’ s projection of itself as a democratic state founded on the ashes of discrimination , prejudice and genocide. Miri Regev, a parliament deputy for Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s governing party and a former brigadier general, illustrated the problem recently on her Facebook page. Ms. Regev called for the expulsion from the premier league of Bnei Sakhnin, a top Israeli club from the Israeli Palestinian town of Sakhnin, because its fans had flown Palestinian flags during a recent match. “The situation where a [soccer] club receives support from the State of Israel as part of its sports-sponsorship policy, while ...

IFJ Welcomes “Ground-breaking” Decision by Singapore Court to Quash Order on Journalist’s Sources 0 comments Add a comment The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has today welcomed the landmark decision of a Singapore Court of Appeal to overturn an order that a journalist should disclose his sources for an article he had written on his blog.  James Dorsey, a Singapore-based journalist and author of the blog ‘The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer', had appealed against an order to disclose his sources for an article about the relationship between World Sports Group (WSG) and Mohammed Bin Hammam, a former Fifa Vice-President and one-time President of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), who is now banned from the game. In the first ever ruling of its kind in Singapore's history, the Court of Appeal held that the country's lower court was wrong to issue the order and quashed it, while also ordering that WSG should pay Mr Dorsey's cos...

SINGAPORE Court of Appeal overturns order for journalist to reveal sources ; Judges rule that any pre-action interrogatory procedure should be allowed only after court has taken multi-factorial view Amir Hussain
 Amir Hussain 612 words 16 January 2014 TODAY (Singapore) TDAYSG APM 26 English (c) 2014. MediaCorp Press Ltd. SINGAPORE — The Court of Appeal yesterday allowed a veteran journalist to withhold the source or sources from which he had obtained a confidential audit report on the  Asian  Football  Confederation  ( AFC ) , overturning an earlier court order for him to reveal who he got the document from. The highest court in the land also ruled that any pre-action interrogatory procedure should be allowed only after a court had taken a multi-factorial view and questioned whether it is just for the applicant to secure the information sought even before any proceedings are commenced. Judge of Appeal V K Rajah, who delivered ...

SOURCES Singapore Jan 14, 2014 5:20:56 PM Page 1 The Court of Appeal in Singapore has overturned an order that a journalist should disclose the source of material he had written about the relationship between World Sports Group (WSG) and former Fifa vice-president Mohammed Bin Hammam. Writer and scholar James Dorsey, a senior fellow at the Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, and author of the blog The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, had appealed against an order to disclose his sources for a report about the relationship between World Sports Group (WSG) and Mohammed Bin Hammam, a former Fifa vice-president and one-time president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) who is now banned from the game. A Singapore court had ordered him to respond to pre-action interrogatories which WSG had wanted completed. The sports management group had argued that Mr Dorsey should provide the information b...