Al-Raisi, a high-ranking official of the United Arab Emirates, the favorite candidate to become the new president but he is weighed down by three complaints of torture
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT PARIS General Ahmed Naser al-Raisi, powerful senior official of the United Arab Emirates, the favorite candidate to become the new president of Interpol, the organization that brings together the police forces of 195 countries. The election scheduled for tomorrow in Istanbul, and after more than forty years of career in the Gulf police al-Raisi could succeed South Korean Kim Jong-yang in the Lyon office. Except that at the time of taking office, at the beginning of 2022, the new supreme coordinator of the fight against crime in the world he could be arrested by the French police. A strong man, even too much, of the Emirates, General al-Raisi hit in France by three charges of torture.
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The first was presented in Paris by the human rights defender’s lawyers and bloggers Ahmed Mansour, for four years locked up in solitary confinement in a four square meter cell, because he is accused of threatening public order and disseminating false information. General al-Raisi’s relentless fight against crime and terrorism, according to human rights organizations, extends to the persecution of any opponent to the regime of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed.
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Yesterday in Istanbul a press conference was organized by the English lawyer Rodney Dixon, who assists the British academic Matthew Hedges arrested by Emirati police in May 2018 and then accused of spying for the UK. Hedges said he was imprisoned in a tiny cell, beaten, tortured, drugged and forced to sign a false confession. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was released after two years of mistreatment following pressure from London. According to Hedges, General al-Raisi responsible for what happened to me, it is impossible that he was not aware of the violence.
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A third complaint was filed by Ali Issa Ahmad, a British citizen like Hedges, who was in the Emirates in January 2019 and followed an Asian Cup match wearing a Qatar national team shirt. In those days the United Arab Emirates participated in the blockade against Qatar also declared by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt and continued until January 2021. Ali Issa Ahmad was arrested, beaten and stabbed.
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In the Interpol charter mentioned the obligation to respect human rights, and unthinkable that the presidency of an institution created to prosecute the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes all over the world has at its head an individual involved in torture cases, says William Bourdon, the Parisian lawyer hired by the NGO Gulf Center for Human Rights to defend Ahmed Mansour. Bourdon asked Turkey, which is currently hosting the Interpol Assembly, to arrest al-Raisi on torture charges, but just yesterday the Crown Prince of the Emirates, Mohammed ben Zayed al-Nahyan, was warmly welcomed in Ankara by Turkish President Erdogan to relaunch relations between the two states.
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The Emirates have guaranteed Interpol a loan of 56 million dollars, becoming the second largest contributor to the organization after the United States, and with the French government they have a privileged relationship which also manifests itself in the purchase of dozens of Rafale fighters. The Interpol summit is becoming a delicate position: in 2018 the then president Meng Hongwei, who suddenly disappeared from the Lyon office, was sentenced in China to 13 years in prison for corruption.
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November 23, 2021 (change November 23, 2021 | 21:34)
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