British fan tortured in the UAE because of Qatar

SANAA, Feb. 16 (YPA) -The British press has revealed the magnitude of the terrible atrocities and abuses suffered by British football fan Ali Issa Ahmed during his arrest in the UAE for nothing more than wearing the shirt of the Qatar team.

The British Guardian newspaper met with Ali Issa, 26, a security guard in Wolverhampton after his return to Britain and made serious statements confirming that he was tortured, beaten, attacked with a knife and deprived of sleep and food.

“I was sure I was dying, and I even thought about suicide,” Ahmed said.

The British fan traveled to the UAE for holidays in January, and had a ticket to attend the match in the Asian Cup between Qatar and Iraq on the 22nd of the same month. Ali Issa Ahmed decided to attend wearing the Qatari national football team shirt, because he did not know that in the UAE it is a crime punishable by imprisonment just for wearing Qatari symbols.

The newspaper confirmed that it saw the traces of attacks with a knife on Ahmed , as well as wounds in his chest and a broken tooth as a result of a strong punch from a UAE security official.

The United Arab Emirates has banned the display of Qatari imagery and even the public speaking of the word Qatar, as a result of a diplomatic dispute between the two nations.

The UAE has joined Saudi Arabia in engaging in highly aggressive policies towards Qatar since 2017, due to the fact that the Qatari government has refused to obey Saudi-UAE dictates about its sovereign affairs.

Qatar maintains a strong diplomatic relationship with Iran, has a highly profitable natural gas industry, and owns both a lucrative state-owned airline company (Qatar Airways) and the influential international news agency Al-Jazeera. On top of this, Qatar, together with Turkey, is often seen as an important centre for orthodox Sunni scholars and political organizations, many of whom are opponents of the extreme Saudi-led Wahhabi school of thought.

All of these factors have made Qatar into a target of the Saudi-UAE axis, which has translated even into the realm of sports.

E.M