February 18 – A British fan who was detained whilst on holiday in the United Arab Emirates for wearing a Qatari football shirt says he was convinced he was going to be killed.
Ali Issa Ahmad, a security guard who is understood to be originally from Sudan, said he was stabbed in prison, and deprived of sleep, food and water for several days.
“I thought 100% that I was going to die in the UAE,” he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “I thought I would commit suicide rather than letting them kill me.”
The UAE is part of the economic blockade of Qatar and Ahmed as arrested after he attended an Asian Cup match on January 22 in Abu Dhabi wearing a Qatari shirt at the Qatar-Iraq game. Reports said Ahmad had apparently been unaware of a law against “showing sympathy” for Qatar.
The UAE embassy in London said he had been charged with wasting police time and making false statements having previously stated he was “categorically not arrested for wearing a Qatar football shirt”.
Hours after arriving back in Britain, however, Ahmad told the Guardian how he had been arrested, beaten, interrogated and detained following an initial stop by security officials for wearing the Qatar shirt.
He had a series of knife wounds to his arm, injuries to his chest and a stab wound to his side and was in a state of shock, the paper wrote. He was also quoted as saying that a security official had knocked out a tooth when he punched him in the face.
Ahmad, a fluent Arabic speaker, was reportedly prevented from reading documents he was forced to sign.
“Before I got on the plane back to the UK a UAE official at the airport said to me: ‘We are a very good country.’ I don’t know how I can get justice for what happened to me but if I can I will do it,” he was quoted as saying.
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