A flood of accusations against a United Arab Emirates (UAE) security chief, Ahmed al-Raisi, poured out after the announcement that he seeks to become the new head of Interpol, U.K.’s Daily Telegraph said Thursday.
Two British citizens accused the Inspector General in the Ministry of the Interior Ahmed al-Raisi of being responsible for their torture and urged against his nomination for the position of Interpol’s president.
The media reports said that British academic and football fan claim that al-Raisi was in charge of organizing and controlling the security and police forces in the UAE, and "was ultimately responsible for torture and detention."
According to British postgraduate student Matthew Hedges, he was forced to consume a drug cocktail while imprisoned in Dubai on spy charges in 2018. The Telegraph said that Hedges was given a life sentence in prison after a five-minute hearing and was pardoned later that year.
However, Hedges stressed that during the imprisonment time UAE police forced him to take a mixture of drugs to get a confession of guilt. As a result, the student confessed despite not being guilty of the charges.
"The next president of Interpol should know all about the principle of command responsibility and respect the rule of law," Hedges said. "It is therefore extremely concerning that the man who was ultimately responsible for my torture and detention is to even be considered for the position of Interpol president."
Another accuser of al-Raisi, a British football fan who was detained for wearing a Qatar football shirt to a match also expressed his fears regarding the UAE security chief.
Ali Ahmad said he was stabbed in the chest and arms with a knife, hit in the face, as a result of which he lost a tooth, suffocated with a plastic bag and his clothes were burned by the security forces.
"I cannot believe that I need to ask an International police group like Interpol not to elect the person (ultimately) responsible for my torture to become their president," Ahmad said. "What I suffered in the UAE was very traumatizing and it will scar me for life."