Footballers dream turned nightmare

Bahrain Footballers Pay Price for Protesting
by Michael Casey – AP – 26 August, 2011

SITRA, Bahrain – When anti-government protests broke out in Bahrain, Alaa and Mohammed Hubail hunkered down in their family compound and refused to take part. They feared their reputations as top footballers would make them easy targets for police.

But Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa soon came out in support of peaceful protests. It was the green light the Hubail brothers were looking for and they joined a march of several hundred athletes to Pearl Square, the epicenter of Shiite-led protests against the Gulf nation’s Sunni rulers.

Two weeks after the February march, the 31-year-old Alaa Hubail was interrogated on state-run television and called a traitor. He and his 29-year-old brother were arrested a day later along with national team goalkeeper Ali Saeed Abdullah as they trained at their Al Alhi club. They were among six players from the national team who were hauled into jail, where they say they were tortured for taking part in the protests.

Mohammed Hubail was tried and sentenced to two years in jail. He is out of jail while he appeals the sentence. Alaa’s case is pending. They have gone from celebrities to pariahs among Bahrain’s pro-government factions — barred from playing on the national team and blacklisted from the local league for what they contend was simply following the advice of the crown prince.

“I served my country with love and will continue as much as I can,” Alaa Hubail, nicknamed the Golden Boy after the prolific striker was the top scorer in the 2004 Asian Cup, told The Associated Press at his home in the Shiite-dominated village of Sitra in the first interviews the brothers have given to foreign media.

“But I won’t forget the experience which I went through for all my life,” he said. “What happened to me was a cost of fame. Participating in the athletes’ rally was not a crime.”

The backlash against the Hubail brothers was part of a sweeping, government crackdown in a bid to snuff out opposition to the regime. Besides the arrest of hundreds of citizens, students were expelled from universities, government employees were fired, and doctors and nurses put on trial for treating injured protesters.

Protesters were denigrated and interrogated on state television and then accused of anti-state conspiracies in trials before a secretive, security court. Even some of the slightest infractions were dealt with harshly, including a 20-year-old woman who was sentenced to a year in prison for reading a poem critical of Bahrain’s king.

Inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Bahrain’s Shiite majority took to the streets on Feb. 14 to demand that the country’s more than 200-year-old Sunni dynasty loosen its control on top government and security posts. After days of mostly peaceful protests, the regime cracked down on the protesters, resulting in the deaths of more than 30 people and the detention of thousands. …more