3 days ago
Abdullah Ibhais Speaks Out: 'FIFA And Qatar Got Away With It'
Abdullah Ibhais with a member of his family. He has spent more than three years in a Qatari prison.
Abdullah Ibhais did not watch a single match of the 2022 World Cup. In a previous life, the tournament would have been the high point of his professional career, but languishing in a Qatari jail, Ibhais could not bear witnessing the four-week football extravaganza playing out in the Gulf nation. 'There was a television, a public one they brought out before the World Cup, a huge one,' Ibhais said in a telephone interview from Oslo. 'It was the single lowest moment. It felt like defeat. The Qataris had simply won. They got away with it and got their moment under the spotlight. Everyone looked the other way to see the beautiful game, regardless of the ugly truth behind it.'
During his more than three-year imprisonment, Ibhais experienced many low points. He recounts: 'When I was on hunger strike, a guard took away the salt and he said that, 'my directions are not to save your life, you can die if you want. I only have one concern, one duty, and that is to silence you'.'
In November 2021, Ibhais, then deputy communications director for the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, Qatar's local organizing committee, was arrested over accusations of fraud involving a tender. He had, however, raised concerns about the treatment of workers, who had been working on the construction of the Al-Bayt Stadium and the Education City Stadium, two World Cup venues, and whose wages had not been paid for two months. Hassan Al Thawadi, the general secretary of the Supreme Committee, ordered that the story be spun.
Ibhais always maintained his innocence. In March 2025, he was reunited with his family in Amman, Jordan, where he lives. He says he intends to sue his former employer, the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, as well as FIFA. He explained: 'I will try to hold them accountable for what they did to me, of course, but I will also try to hold them accountable for their own guidelines. They say that they protect whistleblowers. They say that they care about human rights. They say that they defend human rights. They should be held accountable to their own guidelines and promises.'
In 2022, Qatar staged the first World Cup in the Middle East, a tournament overshadowed by the plight of the migrant workers. Ibhais says that at first he was a 'devoted' employee, who believed Western media coverage of the Qatar World Cup was biased. But after witnessing the conditions of migrant workers firsthand his view changed. He explains: 'I was part of a propaganda machine that was only aimed at promoting Qatar, boosting its reputation in the international community. There was a huge campaign to promote Qatar as a beacon of progressive thinking and change in the region without having anyone questioning it.'
'I was part of a machine that was only focused on PR - not actual change because the first thing that came to their mind was how the media would react to this fact. They fired the workers immediately, not caring about how they would manage, not caring about rectifying their situation, not caring about them at all.'
Ibhais, in part, blames Al Thawadi for his ordeal. He shared a letter sent by Al Thawadi to the Department of Combating Economic and Electronic Crimes authorizing Khalid Al Kubaisi to lodge a complaint against him. The high-ranking official was one of the public faces of the Qatar World Cup, alongside Nasser Al Khater, the tournament's CEO. In an interview with Piers Morgan, Al Thawadi estimated that 400-500 migrant workers had died due to work related to the World Cup, a number far higher than previously cited by organizers.
Ibhais also criticizes the International Labour Organization (ILO) and FIFA for ignoring his plight. The ILO, a UN agency, worked with the Qatari government to improve conditions for workers but has been accused of whitewashing labor abuses after accepting $25 million of Qatari funding for its Doha-based office. He says: 'The ILO completely refused to acknowledge any of my correspondence. They never replied.'
'FIFA's head of human rights, Andreas Graf, replied after Adidas endorsed me. He asked me to provide documentation through the whistleblowing system. I did provide all the documentation he asked for and all I got was a letter through the whistleblower system saying that they will continue to monitor this with the Qatari government and make sure that I get a fair trial.'
According to the United Nations, Ibhais never received a fair trial. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) found that his detention falls under three categories of arbitrary detention: detention lacking any legal basis; detention resulting from the exercise of peaceful expression of opinion, and non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial. The UN body highlights that 'the only inculpatory piece of evidence presented at the trial was his coerced confession, extracted without the presence of an attorney.'
Ibhais calls the trial 'a charade.' He recalls a series of incidents that show how his legal rights were violated: a printed confession, lack of access to a defense lawyer, threats of being disappeared, accusations of espionage and threats of a life sentence.
While Zurich and the world have moved on from Qatar, Ibhais is trying to rebuild his life. FIFA awarded the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia - a country where kafala, the infamous labor system that ties workers to employers, still applies. NGOs called the 'independent assessment' of the human rights policies by Saudi bidders 'flawed.'
Ibhais sees history repeating itself. He rejects FIFA's and Qatar's claims that the kafala system was abolished. He says: 'It is absolutely false because - even after changing the law, you still cannot change jobs without getting your resignation approved by your employer. Qatari authorities have loosened the rules a little bit, but they still control the labor market. It didn't become Sweden or Norway or Switzerland. No, on the contrary, after the World Cup, they are reverting back to what it was before.'
Looking ahead to the 2034 World Cup, he concludes: 'FIFA has a lot to think about when it comes to its human rights responsibility, and the fact that they actually are in control of something that holds value beyond its commercial value to them. The World Cup holds value in terms of its role and bringing change and promoting equality and human rights.'
The State of Qatar, FIFA and the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy did not respond to questions.
