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The life of a refugee footballer

is hanging in the balance.

A nightmare far from

what Hakeem Al-Araibi imagined

when he flew off on his honeymoon.

Please stop them.

He believes he's been wrongly targeted

by the Bahraini authorities.

Hakeem, unwittingly, had walked into a trap.

...as his extradition case

unfolds between three countries.

His supporters included

former Socceroos captain Craig Foster.

This is going to bring up issues of corruption,

of human rights abuse.

We're going to have to take on

the biggest powers in world football.

The twenty-five-year-old

was brought before the Bangkok court shackled in chains.

Now that image shocked the world.

A global campaign to free Hakeem.

He lives in terror

of being extradited to Bahrain,

where he could be tortured or even killed.

Please save me, please.

Like the worst criminal.

How is all this occurring?

You know, what's this kid done?

It was a Tuesday night, I remember this distinctly.

We got a message from Hakeem in Thailand.

Hakeem has been detained in Thailand.

Detained in Thailand?

What do you mean he's-- What's he done?

It was excellent football from Pascoe Vale.

Dangerous ball with a flick, Headers in.

It's a wonderful finish.

Hakeem Al-Araibi.

We had re-signed Hakeem in that summer.

The values that he has are very important

to our football club, you know?

Family person, honest player.

If you come up against Hakeem,

you knew you had a battle on your hands.

He was a very tough defender.

I knew he was a refugee,

and he had some sort of issues in Bahrain,

and that the government wanted to-- to persecute him.

Australia took him in.

He's starting to make a life for himself.

He's met a lady.

He's gotten married.

They didn't have a chance to have a honeymoon.

And he was taking his wife to Thailand.

I didn't eat anything here.

If you can, anyone, help me to go back to Australia, please.

He sent voice notes to all the Bahrainis

who are outside Bahrain that he knows.

So, why he is arrested, it didn't make sense.

He has a protection visa.

So, we tried contacting the DFAT.

The lady who answered my call, she's like,

"He's not Australian. I can't do anything for him."

I'm not asking you if he's Australian or not,

I'm telling you that there is a life

of a human being in danger.

And we were trying to figure out

why was Hakeem arrested?

Is he guilty of doing something?

Or, he is really innocent.

Well, pro-democracy protests

are continuing to spread across the Middle East.

Thousands of protestors in Bahrain

are calling for constitutional reform,

and this is the man they chant about:

King Hamad Al Khalifa,

head of the family that has ruled them

for over two centuries.

What we're demanding is to live

just like any human being in this world.

I am in detention in Bangkok.

For a honeymoon to be the most drastic event

in your life,

you could imagine what a living nightmare

that the two were going through.

In 2011, I took part in the popular uprising.

And you can see a scar on my forehead.

This is a mark of a shoe by a police officer.

And then for simply speaking up

about what I experienced and what I witnessed,

I was thrown in a prison,

and I was convicted by a military court

and I fled and came to the UK.

I thought it would be extremely important

to set up an organisation in London

where it would speak out

about the situation in the country.

The most powerful thing Hakeem had

was his own mobile phone.

I was able to speak to Hakeem directly,

ask him, "Would you be able to send me some pictures?"

I thought a footballer about to be extradited

is an extremely important story,

and my job was to make sure that the whole world

would know about what he was experiencing.

As soon as Hakeem was arrested,

people were getting in touch

from the Bahrain human rights networks.

Hakeem and his wife were met at the gate.

Bahrain had some sort of surveillance on Hakeem

in Australia.

They knew that he was applying for a visa

to go to Thailand.

They knew that they were coming.

Hakeem, unwittingly, had walked into a trap.

The Interpol Red Notice with a photo of Hakeem here,

and it says, "Caution: Dangerous."

One of the core principles of refugee rights

is that you cannot be sent back to a country

where you would face persecution.

But we consistently see regimes will issue

Interpol Red Notices for people who are refugees.

And according to Interpol's own principles,

such Red Notices are supposed to be thrown out.

They are null and void.

So, when I heard that

Australia had formally notified Thailand

of the Red Notice,

I was gobsmacked.

Someone in the Ministry of Home Affairs,

in an incredibly stupid, boneheaded move,

and decided they had to inform the Thais

that he was flying there.

The whole thing was absolutely absurd.

If you can, anyone,

help me to get back to Australia.

I just want to...

Has everyone seen the Red Notice?

Um, so this is the official notice that's been sent around

that actually led to Hakeem's arrest.

The Australian authorities have really messed up

in sending on this illegal document.

So the Interpol Red Notice

was rescinded when Australia notified Interpol

that Hakeem had a valid

refugee protection visa in Australia,

which meant that the Thai government

had an obligation to release Hakeem

and let him come back to Australia.

They didn't do that.

Now, this was a really unusual move.

There was no valid legal reason

why they should have kept Hakeem,

and that was when we really became aware

that there was some strong lobbying

from the Bahraini authorities to Thailand directly

for the purpose of extraditing him back to Bahrain.

In 2014, a Bahraini dissident named Ali Haroon

was stuck in Thailand,

and at that time, we attempted to do whatever in our power

to halt his extradition without success.

We know that Ali Haroon fled

after being imprisoned and tortured in 2013

to Thailand.

And the Thai government then arrested him in 2014

and extradited him back to Bahrain.

He was sedated to get onto the aeroplane.

His injuries were so bad

that when he arrived back in Bahrain,

he had to be hospitalised,

and no one has heard of him or been able to visit him

since 2017.

We know that Hakeem would be next.

Hakeem would be subjected to,

if not, like, similar experience,

if not worse.

The risk of him being handed over was so real.

Once Hakeem had been transferred from the airport

to the immigration detention centre in Suan Plu,

he was actually held in an office.

He wasn't put in the general detention population.

And his wife was there too,

and he was able to hold onto his phone.

My biggest concern was that not enough people

knew what was happening

and that if Thailand tried to pull a fast one,

there was going to be some sort of secret deal,

there would be no way we could stop it.

No.

Hakeem Al-Araibi has spent his first nights

in the main remand prison in Bangkok,

after almost two weeks detained at the airport

and an immigration centre.

Hakeem, what's your message?

What do you want to say?

What do you hope happens today?

I don't-- I don't know.

I don't want to go back to Bahrain,

I want to go back to Australia.

I didn't do anything in Bahrain.

I am a refugee in Australia.

I will get citizenship soon in Australia.

I am Australian, not Bahraini.

I didn't do anything.

It's just this vulnerable kid, a footballer.

You know, he's just-- he's a footballer,

he's the same as me,

just with a different passport.

And here he is with a whole country

trying to pull this kid back where he'd been tortured.

And he's facing torture again.

And I just couldn't believe it.

Please stop them.

Keep going, keep going.

Chase him, chase him. It's still yours.

We're blessed in Australia, playing football,

because it's such a diverse game.

Since the age of probably fifteen,

when I started to move into our junior national teams,

I was in a mix of Australians of every ethnicity,

every religion, every culture

and that's really a gift.

No one could believe that this team came from

some unknown soccer nation called Australia.

The game just places us in the middle

of this melting pot of cultures.

That's been central to developing my world view.

Here's Aloisi for a place in the World Cup.

He scores!

- Australia have done it! - Come on!

Come on, Australia!

This is what it's about.

The tension and the passion.

Good morning, everyone, I'm Craig Foster,

SBS's chief football analyst.

With twenty years in the media

and the profile I had in the game in Australia,

I knew that I had a range of skills

that could help him.

So, I went through the history of Bahraini activism

and human rights abuse against athletes.

The more reading I did,

I knew that he was in deep, deep trouble.

It's clear that something is very, very foul.

Gianni Infantino from Switzerland

is one of the favourites

to become FIFA's first new president in eighteen years.

Of course I'm confident.

Sheikh Salman from Bahrain

is the other frontrunner.

I'm very confident. Very confident.

Though human rights groups claim

he had local soccer players arrested

following pro-democracy protests.

Basically, a member of Bahraini ruling family,

Sheikh Salman Al Khalifa,

nominated himself to be elected

as the FIFA president.

At the time when Hakeem was arrested in Bahrain

and subjected to torture,

he was the president

of Bahrain Football Associations.

During 2011, Prince Nasser mandated Sheikh Salman

to be in charge of the committee

which will come after those athletes

which has stood up against the government,

and it was not long before those players

were picked up, and they were subjected

to brutal torture.

This is the man who is going to be in charge

of leading FIFA.

All of a sudden, there was massive media interest

about Bahrain as a subject

because of Sheikh Salman's nomination.

So, back in 2016,

I was trying to find someone who could tell us

what it means to be a footballer

under Salman's leadership,

and I was told that there is this guy

who's currently in Australia.

Hakeem Al-Araibi used to play

for Bahrain's national team.

He was arrested during the crackdown

that followed the uprising.

He was the first person to say

Sheikh Salman failed to protect

footballers in Bahrain.

It was reported on page one

on The New York Times.

This is a story that hit headlines

across the globe.

First of all, when you say tortured,

I think allegedly tortured.

These are false, you know, nasty lies

that has been repeated again and again.

Surely, on a basic level, as the head

of the National Association,

you have failed those footballers.

They were simply displaying their political viewpoint.

You cannot accept somebody coming to you

and accusing you of things that you haven't done,

and they're just repeating it again and again.

More than two hundred football associations

from around the world have gathered in Zurich

to vote in the next FIFA President.

Stop supporting Salman!

Stop supporting Salman!

Stop supporting Salman!

Since 2011,

we've had more than one hundred and fifty athletes

arrested and imprisoned,

and so we're looking at a long time issue

with the Bahraini government going after athletes

as a part of the crackdown against democracy

and human rights.

And so, if Sheikh Salman is elected here today,

what kind of message is FIFA sending

about the integrity of FIFA?

This was the moment Gianni Infantino

became the new face of world soccer.

Sheikh Salman from Bahrain came in second.

- Pardon? - Are you disappointed...

Oh, no, no, no, no, I think, you know,

this is sports, this is fair play,

and we have to show it inside and outside.

All the best for him, thank you.

Hakeem Al-Araibi has spent his first nights

in the main remand prison in Bangkok.

In the next sixty days, a court will start deciding

whether to extradite him to Bahrain,

the country he fled,

or return him to Australia.

He was clearly left behind

by his own country.

I felt that he was being left behind by Australia now.

Was I into football? No.

Um, was I interested?

Not even a little bit.

I've come from Bosnia. I'm a refugee myself.

So I sort of had that connection

where I knew he left his home already.

He's got his whole future in front of him,

and all of a sudden, he finds himself detained

while having protection from Australia.

And then I went on Twitter looking,

hoping that I could maybe find somebody talking about it.

In those early weeks,

you had Sayed starting to become vocal.

Different organisations here and globally,

they were used to what was going on here.

Bahrain, you know,

were serial offenders in this regard,

so I was in touch with them,

just trying to work out, what could I do.

When we first tweeted about Hakeem,

what is the hashtag that I need to use?

I tried to come up quickly with something.

#SaveHakeem.

Fatima and ourselves came up with that

because we felt social media is the only way

that we can get this happening.

Hi, I'm Vitale Ferrante, I'm Hakeem's coach.

All of Australia, we've got to get behind #SaveHakeem.

Please, help us to bring him back to Australia.

...three! Save Hakeem!

I had never really used social media

in any great degree, so I was just

making it up, really, as I went along.

It seemed for weeks

all the same names kept popping up,

so we all started sort of helping each other out.

Hakeem is extraordinarily brave,

and for trying to shed light on

the torture of people in Bahrain,

they chased him across the globe.

We're doing it because it's unfair on him.

Bahrain trying to, you know,

punish someone who embarrassed them.

It's almost unheard of

for an extradition request in Bangkok

not to be granted.

People like Hakeem Al-Araibi who face

extradition proceedings of this kind,

the vast majority, if not all of them,

do end up being extradited.

He could not end up in Bahrain.

Like, that was a death sentence.

We were starting to see names becoming familiar

who are tweeting about the same thing,

trying to raise awareness.

We kept retweeting each other,

and... just to keep it going and trying to get this hashtag

to sort of get a life of its own.

I started to see that people were sharing his story

and supporting me.

"Craig, we're with you, tell us what to do."

You know, "How can we help?"

Craig gets in touch

and just pops random people together in a group

and said, "You're our social media team."

I think he did actually act as a coach to the team

and he guided us as to where he wanted us to go,

and where to take the attention to.

At the moment not many people know about it,

and I guess if we can leverage public sentiment

and get people involved,

it's a pretty compelling story.

A young man on his honeymoon with his wife, new wife.

Part of the challenge is Hakeem is a Muslim,

uh, he's a refugee,

and they're things that are potentially not very appealing

to the Australian community at the moment.

Some components of his story and his life

meant that he was less likely to get the support

both of the Australian government

and I think probably of the Australian people.

Refugees in the last twenty years

have been incredibly demonised.

If you travel by boat without a visa,

you will not make Australia home.

People weren't taking this as seriously.

They were like, "Eh, who's this,

this Muslim, you know, refugee.

How is that our problem?"

People are not going to come and get him

simply because he's a refugee.

People are not going to come and get him

just because he's a Bahraini who's been tortured.

People might come and help him and speak out for him,

and we might have a chance, a slim chance,

if we can activate sport.

Finally, belatedly.

Now, the football angle

was a really interesting one

because sport is like a religion in Australia.

And his legend grows.

He's going to need

football to come to his rescue.

On behalf of Hakeem's wife,

I am here to submit the letter

to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha

and ask him, please, to release Hakeem

on humanitarian grounds.

Really scary things happening in Thailand.

Hakeem's wife keeps calling in tears

thinking he's been put on a plane to Bahrain.

The last dissident, Ali Haroon,

was tortured on the plane,

so this is very serious.

Minky.

My reaction was, we have to mobilise

the Sport and Rights Alliance, we have to mobilise

international human rights community.

Many of the Gulf countries,

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain,

they really want to be part of the world community,

but they don't want to reform their human rights practices.

In Bahrain, after 2011, after the Arab Spring,

it was very interesting how the government

attempted to rehabilitate its image through sports.

It's the Bahrain Grand Prix,

and it's lights out, and away we go!

Sport can be used to provide a cover

for some of the most egregious and threatening undertakings

in the history of modern society.

Sportswashing lets some of the world's

worst human rights abusers rub elbows

with the international sports community

to make your country look like a member in good standing

of the international community.

We actually had a situation where

mega sporting events,

such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup,

were being associated with human rights atrocities.

The 2022 FIFA World Cup

is Qatar.

Qatar was a tipping point in many ways.

There had to be the mass migration of workers

to undertake the scale of construction

which the bid required.

These men have to work in temperatures

exceeding 50 degrees Celsius.

Amnesty International

has described it as the World Cup of shame.

It's likened the conditions of the workers there

to slavery.

So FIFA had no human rights policy

because they don't want to give up

their wealthy, abusive partners.

For nearly a decade,

Russia and Qatar have been suspected

of buying votes

to win hosting rights for the 2018

and 2022 World Cups.

According to the Department of Justice here,

it was an example of a multi-billion-dollar business

operating not as a sports governing body,

but as a corrupt criminal enterprise.

Now, the fourteen defendants

charged in the indictment we are unsealing today

include high-ranking officials of FIFA.

This really is the World Cup of fraud.

This event called the World Cup,

one of the great sports events of the world,

is now mired in corruption and human rights abuse.

But one whistle-blower says

Qatar only did what was needed

when dealing with FIFA's culture of corruption.

More people will die

in the building of the football stadiums

for the World Cup in 2022

than players will play.

Six and a half thousand people

have lost their lives

in relation to construction efforts

around the World Cup.

And so FIFA knew it had to act

not really out of any sense of human rights concern,

but in order to preserve

the very essence of its business.

And so in 2016,

it adopted a human rights policy.

Knowing that FIFA had passed these rules,

the first thing I wanted to do was talk with Hakeem

before they took away his cell phone.

Do you know FIFA has a human rights policy?

Rights on paper are meaningless

unless they're tested and implemented.

That was the question that Hakeem's case posed.

Could FIFA, with a new president,

actually do the right thing?

It was imperative we saved Hakeem

for Hakeem the human being

and for the billions of people

whose human rights are affected

by the conduct of sport.

If we were going to prevent any of this

from happening again,

then we had to save Hakeem.

Hakeem being an Australian footballer,

the first steps that he needed from support from the sport

was the Australian Football Federation,

which is part of the Asian Football Confederation.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome

the honourable President

of the Asian Football Confederation,

His Excellency, Sheikh Salman.

Salman was running Asia,

and was the right-hand man

and had the ear of Infantino at FIFA.

This guy was going to be expected

to actually step forward and help him.

The greatest football show

on the continent is underway.

It was hugely fortuitous that

the Asian Cup was at that time

when this kid is sitting in jail.

"Dear Sir, I write to you as a member

of the Australian football family

regarding my football brother, Hakeem Al-Araibi.

As President of the AFC,

will you issue an immediate statement

on behalf of the AFC

calling for Hakeem Al-Araibi's release?"

Big opportunity now, Al Hammadi!

"The position of AFC President now carries

a non-negotiable obligation to do everything possible

to uphold the human rights of all in football."

And a penalty's been given.

That quite new FIFA human rights policy

became the wonderful opportunity, in a way,

to obligate Infantino and FIFA and AFC to act.

And so, writing to Salman just puts him on notice

and it also puts all of the people

getting involved in the campaign on notice

that that's where we're headed.

This is about taking on the biggest powers

in world football.

Full-time whistle sounds

in the opening game of the 2019 Asian Cup.

Save Hakeem! Save Hakeem!

Thank you, everyone, for coming today

for the solidarity protest in support of Hakeem Al-Araibi

and to call on the Thai government

to release Hakeem immediately,

particularly today, with a bilateral meeting

with our Foreign Minister, Marise Payne.

We knew that Marise Payne

was going to visit her counterpart in Thailand.

This was one of the highest escalations,

diplomatically, that a country can take.

So the purpose of having that protest at the same time

was really to ramp up the pressure

on the Thai government

who were able to send Hakeem home at any moment.

We had really high hopes that Marise Payne's visit

would result in a positive outcome for Hakeem.

We're also calling on the

AFC, Asian Football Confederation,

to publicly support Hakeem.

So, away we go, with Bahrain all in red

as Bahrain face Thailand.

We're also calling on the president of the AFC,

Sheikh Salman, to support Hakeem Al-Araibi,

to make a public statement.

The silence of over six weeks

of the Asian Football Confederation

is completely unacceptable.

This could go.

Trying to tip it right, and he's scoring!

It's a super finish!

The Thai government

is most certainly aware

of the importance of this matter to Australia.

I do note that there are legal proceedings underway

in relation to Mr. Al-Araibi,

and Australia will continue to be in very close contact

with Thai authorities in relation to this.

We received word that Marise Payne's visit

had not been a success,

and this was a significant blow

for the campaign.

We're certainly concerned

about why the Thai government is prioritising

its relationship with the Kingdom of Bahrain

over its relationship with Australia.

So why is that happening?

What is the relationship between Thailand and Bahrain?

All of these questions, you know, are bubbling up,

and no one had the answers.

Hakeem's wife consistently asked

to remain anonymous throughout the campaign

because she feared for her own life

and the lives and security of her family back in Bahrain,

but she was his greatest advocate.

Hakeem's wife came to Sydney from Melbourne,

and seeing her there in person--

a devastated, traumatised young wife,

sitting down in front of me and asking me, basically,

to save her husband.

And I responded and said,

"You know, I'm doing everything I can."

She said, "Will you save my husband?"

And I was explaining,

you know, the steps I was taking,

and she just kind of stopped me and said,

"Will you save my husband?"

You know, and, um...

Yeah...

I just got the sense in that moment

that this was more important than anything.

Unless I really did something, you know, proper,

she was going to lose her husband.

You know?

Craig's going to go to Bangkok,

and we obviously need to be quite mindful

of his security when he gets there.

Obviously, we're dealing with

a military dictatorship in Thailand,

there's quite strong laws about people speaking out,

particularly about the Royal Family

or the government there.

There may be a situation where

Craig has to get out of Thailand very quickly.

"And so we'll prepare an escape plan.

We'll get you on a train.

We'll get you over one of the several borders.

We've done it before."

And that's when it started to get a bit worrying.

The next day, my daughter actually came inside

and said,

"There's a car across the road,

and people are watching the house."

I went outside, approached the car...

...and they went off.

I was planning to leave in three or four days.

Now, you know, we've got people

outside the house watching our family.

What happens if I go abroad

and then something happens here?

I was never quite sure if it was the right decision.

You went to see him yesterday?

He's tired, he's deflated,

and he's ready to come home.

But, um, I think just...

I mean, try as much as possible

to, um, keep his spirits up

and just to show him that, you know,

that people are with him and supporting him.

- Nice to see you again. - Nice to see you.

Yeah, this is about the third or fourth time...

Craig contacted Evan and said

that he would like to talk to me.

I told him that, for Bahrain to submit

their official extradition request,

they have a sixty-day window.

The Thai government can communicate with Bahrain,

but I feel like Bahrain also don't want to lose face.

Nat explained one really important thing:

Bahrain had not actually submitted

their extradition paperwork.

I thought the paperwork must be in

and we're waiting for the hearing.

She said, "No, it's not even in."

What happens if they don't put this paperwork in?

And she said, "Well then the whole thing goes away,

and he can go home."

Immediately, I started telling

all the social media campaigners,

"We need to pressure now the Bahrain government

not to put the paperwork in."

And so I tweeted out about the fact that it wasn't in,

and that FIFA should be leaning on Salman immediately

back to his government to stop the paperwork.

The night before I went to the prison,

I just couldn't sleep.

You know, this meeting is

the most important meeting of my life.

This is as close to the prison as we can get.

Hakeem Al-Araibi will be behind glass and bars.

Craig Foster will speak with him

via a prison telephone.

Save Hakeem!

How was Hakeem when you saw him?

So, Hakeem is worried because the case

has been ongoing so long now that he...

he's worried, as he said, that Bahrain are winning.

And he said, "I need you guys to win."

He said, "They took my career and they broke my heart

because I love my wife and I love football."

And he said, "The two things I love the most,

they've taken from me."

And I told him that, um...

I told him that the players of the world

are fighting hard for him.

Hakeem Al-Araibi

in everyone's thoughts in the football community.

Good to see the "Save Hakeem" message

going around the A-League this weekend,

the football community rallying

to try and get him back home to Melbourne

and back to his wife.

If every effort is not made,

and if the life of Hakeem Al-Araibi,

in the eyes of the football governance officials

and the football community

is not equally as valuable

as both the lives of the officials

or of the billions of dollars of influence

that is brought to bear in this particular case,

then the soul of football is dead.

Bahrain has formally applied

to extradite Hakeem Al-Araibi,

the Melbourne-based refugee and soccer player

who's been held in a Thailand prison

for two months.

It was completely devastating.

All that then needed to happen was

Thailand's Attorney General would accept the orders,

and Hakeem could be put on a plane the next day.

I actually thought immediately,

Bahrain and Thailand are working together here,

and they're responding to our campaign.

It was clear at that moment that they were winning,

and so I needed to respond and we needed to, basically,

in football parlance, we needed to counterattack.

Yeah, look, Fozz gives us a buzz,

and he says, "Look, this kid--"

he always called Hakeem "this kid,"

I said he's a man but anyway--

"he's in serious danger.

We need to elevate this,

otherwise we're going to have a tragedy on our hands."

I drafted a tweet.

"I'm going to turn up, basically, at your office,

and I'm inviting all of the world's media,

and you better get a meeting to work."

And I remember, before I send it,

just thinking to myself, "God, that's pretty crazy."

You know?

Many people go to FIFA House,

and what's on offer is so seductive

that they end up not really doing their job.

And I said to Schwabe,

"This organisation and that building

is built by us.

It's built on Pelé.

It's built on George Best.

It's built on Eusébio.

It's built on Sam Kerr."

I said to him, "We own that building."

We're seeing Fatma Samoura at midday, at twelve o'clock.

- And your name? - Craig Foster.

FIFA's human rights policy was very much at the centre

of this whole issue.

That's, ah...

It meant that they had to advance

the cause of human rights

and use all available leverage that they had.

Well, when it comes to FIFA, that's massive.

And so there was a number of steps

that we wanted to see FIFA take.

Very nice. My first time here, actually.

- Really? - Yes.

- The home of FIFA? - You've never invited me.

Oh, really? Somebody has to be blamed.

Right. Exactly right.

He knows the games they play,

he knows the regime very well, obviously,

having been tortured previously...

And so we then started the dance

that happens in these meetings.

Fatma and her staff trying to push back

on the fact that they're doing enough,

and me saying to Fatma, "Well, you're not, actually."

Uh, it's clear that, ah, the situation's escalated

since the last statement.

So, shall we talk freely here now, or you want to wait...

No, I think that they can...

Is it okay for you, gentlemen?

My requests of Fatma and of FIFA, then,

were that Infantino got involved immediately,

that he get Salman on the line,

that he let the Bahraini government know

that they need to pull the extradition order,

and that we needed to work on a joint press release

that would be issued immediately

calling on Bahrain to act.

Unless they were prepared to issue that,

then I would walk outside and tell the world's media

that they were leaving this kid to die.

We're delighted to say that FIFA agreed

that this has now become an emergency situation

requiring an escalation

from all stakeholders

to provide full protection for Hakeem.

We also agreed that Fatma and FIFA

are going to escalate the issue

to the highest level of both countries.

Having people like Giorgio Chiellini,

a World Cup winner,

tweeting, "Release Hakeem."

That's where this got to.

Players around the world just started saying,

"Okay, we-- this is just not right."

Protest rallies in Sydney and Melbourne today

have demanded the immediate release

of Hakeem Al-Araibi from a Thai prison.

All right, thank you, everyone, for coming.

The feeling of this country is escalating very quickly,

and Thailand should know that there are repercussions

to taking any decision that's contrary to international law.

Bahrain is trying to send a very strong message

that you may think that you're free in Australia

to speak your mind and to say what you think,

but we will track you down,

we will hunt you, and we will bring you back.

Today, the unions threw their support

behind Hakeem,

and wouldn't rule out travel bans to Thailand

if he isn't released.

The whole movement in Australia

had just taken on a life of its own.

I sadly rise today to talk about

the incarceration of Hakeem Al-Araibi.

I say to the Thai Prime Minister,

Maintain relations with Australia.

Return Hakeem to Victoria now.

Everybody was tweeting about it.

Clearly, it was trending.

People from all over the world

were tweeting on that hashtag.

There was actually just

tens and hundreds of thousands of people

who now had decided this was wrong,

and it was clear that

we had got in the ascendancy again.

At that time, our hopes were so high.

This campaign was a game of chess,

and every time we attacked and made a move,

there would be a counterattack.

Let's see what's making news this Friday,

the first of February.

And refugee footballer Hakeem Al-Araibi

will reportedly face court on Monday

after Bahrain's extradition request

was lodged by Thai prosecutors.

Whilst we'd made good steps,

we clearly were being unsuccessful.

You know, they're still moving ahead.

And I was elated after the FIFA meeting.

A couple of days earlier, we got the press release.

At least they've-- they've publicly called out Bahrain.

But it clearly wasn't enough yet.

In less than forty-eight hours, this kid is in court.

We believed that Hakeem was

going to be extradited to Bahrain,

and I remember telling his wife,

"God won't let you down.

Just pray and He will hear you."

I went to the court.

They cut my hair,

they put me on the bus,

and some of the police,

he held a gun,

he asked me to go out from the bus,

the last one.

I was surprised so many people,

many flash is coming at me.

I was worried for my family.

What are they going to do? What are they thinking?

Your wife sends her love, Hakeem.

All of Australia is with you. Be strong, buddy!

Stay strong, Hakeem. We're with you.

I saw Craig, and he said,

"Hakeem, be strong, be strong."

I was happy to see him there.

Please, save me. Please.

Hakeem looked awful.

Yeah, it was quite devastating to see him that way.

We were shocked.

We were absolutely shocked that he was in shackles.

Like the worst criminal.

What's this kid done?

Spoken truth to power.

That's a question

for Thailand to consider,

the ramification of its actions

for its relationships

with other bodies and other governments.

There was fifteen countries here today

to observe these proceedings.

They're also asking the same thing.

The fact that Thailand was just pushing ahead

regardless of the arguments made against this extradition,

why would they do such a thing?

You know, what is this... What is this all about?

I can tell you now,

there's some aspects of this entire affair

which are extremely concerning,

which will explain Thailand's actions,

but unfortunately, they're just too sensitive

to talk about publicly.

In Thailand when you can't explain things,

when you can't explain why the government's

going in a certain direction,

then you know the answer.

Things are tied up at that royal level

and there's influence there and directives coming down saying,

"This is what you're going to do

and this is how things are going to proceed."

So what is the relationship between

the two Royal Families?

I was constantly asking for information in that regard,

and that wasn't easy to come by

because they have laws in Thailand

where people are imprisoned

if they speak in a negative way

about the Royal Family.

Eventually, I found a few people

who explained to me

the depth of the relationship between the two.

The relationship between them is very deep and historic.

Bahrain had been Thailand's closest trade partner

in the Middle East for decades.

We discovered that the Thai King

had recently negotiated the sale of a hotel

to the Bahrain Royal Family

that had made him 1.6 billion dollars.

And, of course, Salman is a senior member

of the Bahrain Royal Family.

So we now knew this was a matter

of two Royal Families trading the life of Hakeem.

Is he actually saveable?

Is this situation saveable?

That's it, I think.

I honestly, at that point in time, thought--

My kind of hope had, you know, been dashed at that point.

Barefoot in Thailand

and locked up in chains,

a nightmare far from what Hakeem Al-Araibi imagined

when he flew off on his honeymoon.

The life of a refugee footballer

is hanging in the balance.

The twenty-five-year-old

was brought before the Bangkok court

shackled in chains.

Australia's Prime Minister,

soccer governing bodies, and human rights activists

are urging Thailand to set him free.

We all saw those

dramatic pictures of him

appearing at a courtroom in Bangkok

and he was barefooted.

- In shackles... - Shackles...

Shackled in chains.

Now, that image shocked the world.

If we thought the campaign was big at that point,

the shackles, it just blew it up.

Human rights groups are saying there simply isn't

a legal basis for holding him here.

That's when the public turned.

The Thais. That's when the Thais turned.

They didn't like the brutality of their country

being displayed like that.

Some of his supporters have even said

that Thailand should be barred

from staging international matches

if he is sent back to Bahrain.

Once we'd found out

that the Royal Family of Thailand were involved,

we knew that to shift the narrative,

we needed every day Thai people to be speaking out

and putting pressure on their politicians,

and only that was going to shift the King.

We actually started to see protests

in the coming days from Thai clubs themselves,

which was incredibly brave,

given that they're basically protesting against the King.

Football, the beautiful game,

showed how beautiful it can be when they stood up for him.

The "SaveHakeem" hashtag,

this is now the most trending hashtag

in the whole of Thailand.

My view is that the Thai government

is only now starting to see

the global opposition to this move.

And the outrage just swamped the Thai government.

The Thai Prime Minister actually called for calm

they were under so much pressure.

Whoever was religious was praying.

Others were just pleading

because that was the moment.

The game had swung our way again,

but it meant the Thai King was backed into a corner,

and we had no idea how he'd react.

What does that mean?

Why would he be going to Bahrain at this time?

They're going to sneak Hakeem

out of the country.

They've realised that the public pressure

is so great, they can't do this legitimately.

They're actually just going to put a bag over his head,

they're going to take him to the airport

and they're going to shove him on a flight

because once he's back in Bahrain,

nobody can do anything.

We basically thought it was all over.

The thing that really got me about this situation

was that it was football that had done this to Hakeem.

It was the people at the very highest levels of the game

that had failed him,

who didn't seem to understand a thing

about what makes football truly beautiful.

If we stop buying the shirts,

if we stop buying the tickets,

if we refuse to support teams and clubs and competitions

that are abusing human rights,

it all stops.

It all comes back to what is most important.

That is the game, the players, and the fans.

But all I could do in that moment was watch

as these people sat around deciding what to do

with the life of a twenty-five-year-old man.

And I guess I want to give thanks to Australia

and it's amazing to see all the people here.

And I just want to thank this man.

He's fought too much for my case.

And I want to thank you very much.

And I love Australia.

- Thank you very much. - Welcome home, Hakeem!

A young Australian...

Um... sorry.

Good on you, Fozzy!

A young Australian reunited with his wife.

That's the most important thing here.

Refugee footballer Hakeem Al-Araibi

is back in Australia a free man.

Late yesterday, a Thai court announced an extradition order

lodged by Bahrain had been dropped.

We now know the pressure brought by

the Save Hakeem campaign

caused a flurry of diplomatic activity.

After Thailand's foreign minister

made a trip to Bahrain,

Thailand's government announced

the extradition request had been dropped.

I felt hope.

I am Hakeem Al-Araibi.

I am a footballer.

I am a torture survivor.

And I am a human rights defender.