He spent three horrific years in a Doha jail, now Abdullah Ibhais wants justice from Qatar and Fifa

Independent

30-05-2025

Now that Abdullah Ibhais sits happily in Oslo, enjoying the cool air, he can calmly reflect on the moment he realised his life was changing. The former 2022 World Cup worker – described by Amnesty as a Qatar whistleblower – had been going through the state's legal process following his November 2021 arrest, and was at that point optimistic there had just been some misunderstanding.
Ibhais describes how, in the middle of the process, one Qatari official came out with the following.
'You think you can fight the state?'
Ibhais couldn't do anything but laugh in shock. 'At that moment I realised how deep the issue was.' The Jordanian national was finally released on 11 March 2025, having served his full sentence. In July 2024, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions declared he had been a victim of arbitrary detention and urged Qatari authorities to immediately release him.
Human rights groups like FairSquare believe his case serves as a prism for the story of that entire World Cup. Ibhais wasn't just a worker in the preparations for the most watched sporting event in the world, he was a media manager. His case consequently involves the long and controversial build-up, the migrant workers, the media coverage, how Qatar spins and how Qatar works.
Ibhais' version is that he went to investigate workers rights' complaints, stood up for them by advising the Supreme Committee to acknowledge their role, before he was the subject of a malicious prosecution. FairSquare say Ibhais provided plenty of evidence for his case.
The version from within Qatar points to Ibhais' April 2021 conviction for 'bribery', 'violation of the integrity of tenders and profits' and 'intentional damage to public funds'. Ibhais' conviction was upheld on appeal, although his sentence was reduced from five years to three years.FairSquare say there was almost no evidence for this, other than Ibhais' own confession, which he retracted and said was coerced. The human rights body says his allegation of coercion is highly credible. The UN working group's finding that he was a victim of arbitrary detention is also highly significant, especially in light of Fifa 's refusal to comment when contacted by The Independent.
He now wants to go further than just fighting the state. He wants to try and sue both Qatar's Supreme Committee and Fifa, for negligence.
'They couldn't even follow their own guidelines,' Ibhais says of Fifa. 'I'll try every possible avenue, either in Switzerland, the US or any country where they have jurisdiction or bilateral agreements with Fifa.'
Fifa did previously repeat the line 'any person deserves a trial that is fair and where due process is observed and respected', but FairSquare describe this as meaningless. The Independent covered Ibhais' case during the 2022 World Cup, and speaks to him now in the Norwegian capital, the night before he does a series of events at the Oslo Freedom Forum. It is the first time Ibhais has left Jordan, as well as his wife and two young children, since he was deported from Doha after his release. The timing is apt, given this is five days before Saturday's Champions League final in Munich, where Qatar could enjoy their next great sporting moment. .
The discussion turns to Qatar's previous great sporting moment: the hosting of that World Cup.
Ibhais says he couldn't even watch it. Such obstinacy took concerted effort, given that the prison guards apparently rolled huge TVs into the mess hall for all 29 days, with prisoners not allowed to change the channel from BeIN Sport.
'During the World Cup was the worst,' Ibhais says. 'It felt like total defeat.
'OK, it's hard to be cut away from your family, but the feeling of injustice was the hardest thing to cope with. They got what they wanted, here it was, you're there, no one cares and there's nothing you can do. Life goes on, yours doesn't.'
It is shortly into telling this story that Ibhais offers what he feels is a crucial caveat.
'I accept I am biased.'
How could he not be, given his experience?
Ibhais was eventually detained at a prison that was closest to the Khalifa International Stadium, which hosted England's opening 6-2 win over Iran. He later alleged he was 'physically assaulted by the prison guards', before being subjected to 'complete darkness in solitary confinement… with temperatures near freezing as the prison's central air-conditioning was used as a torture device' so that he couldn't sleep for 96 hours.
'That was all true,' Ibhais says, 'because they were so worried I was going to do something before the World Cup. They felt like teaching me a lesson.'
Ibhais adds that the conditions in the prison were completely unhygienic. He hasn't actually gone to a doctor since his release, something a little surprising given that he chose to see a therapist before he was even arrested.
'I was having panic attacks because I realised what I was part of, and I couldn't live with it,' Ibhais says. 'That realisation was worse than prison. It is shocking. Prison, I expected. This, I didn't.'
It's at this moment that Ibhais feels a point needs to be stressed. Throughout the entire 2022 World Cup cycle, Qatar's persistent narrative was that a young state was going through a journey of development, especially as regards the issue of migrant workers. The plea was for understanding, amid reference to necessarily gradual reforms.
Ibhais knows this well, since his job was to push that narrative.
'They couldn't care less,' he says. 'Forget about how they address the whole issue. Listen to how many Qataris talk to their own workers. It is depressing, the way they yell at them, the way they more or less think of these men and women as slaves.
'Even the most progressive, when they're angry, there's zero respect. Maybe they'll apologise later.'
Ibhais says this even extended to prison, where detained Qataris essentially 'hired south Asians to clean for them'. He agrees with the analysis that all reforms were 'superficial'.
'They think they are right and moral, just because they are rich. It took me so long to understand they are bad people. I really believed for so long. Even when they actually detained me, even when they forced me to sign a confession that was already printed – even after all of this – I still believed they can't be so bad.
'I was under the impression mid-level officials decided this, and the trial couldn't be swayed.'
It's why he says that one sentence from an official – 'You think you can fight the state?' – suddenly made everything so clear.
Against that, there nevertheless remains so much mystery to the case, from the motivations to how high it went. Ibhais believes the reason he was detained cuts to the very nature of the state.
'It was the concept of whistleblowing. It was not what I exactly said,' he explains. 'They didn't like that someone can challenge the way they are doing things.
'They are positioning themselves as leaders of change, and all that trust lies with the Supreme Committee. So if you tolerate such behaviour and the Supreme Committee is discredited, you discredit everything. And if you're paying $250bn for this reputational campaign…'
Tellingly, Ibhais was mostly housed with 'state security prisoners' and political dissidents.
'They have so many layers of classification but the most important is 'state security' and people they want to isolate from the world.'
One question brings a reference to 'people they're afraid of', to which Ibhais interjects. 'They're not afraid of anyone. It's people they want to silence.'
He says those first six months were 'extremely hard'.
'I basically lost my life. Feeling helpless and away from my family was devastating. Then I thought 'this might take a long time', so I had to find a way to deal with this.'
Ibhais started writing to anyone he could think of, from Amnesty to media. That started to bring some peace of mind, aided by the knowledge his wife could still work in Doha, so their two children – now aged six and eight – could be looked after. He says 'this was part of the deal with the public prosecutor when I signed the confession'.
'Thank God we managed. Of course, all our savings evaporated. I always had hope someone, somewhere, would recognise what was done.'
He didn't find that recognition at Fifa, which is one major reason he wants to take action. Despite supplying Fifa with all of his material, Ibhais says he was essentially 'ghosted'.
That was just over a year before the World Cup, and Ibhais believes that Qatar felt he was 'low enough that people would forget'.
'There's a hierarchy. There are original Qataris, then from Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, then the westerners, then other Arabic people, then you have Bangladeshis, Indians… I am in the middle. That's why they thought it would be easy to make an example of me.'
Ibhais says his treatment greatly eased once the tournament ended. He was even allowed to speak to his family for 15 minutes every week. When he was eventually free with them in March, it was 'like coming back to life'.
'I still feel I am in that moment. It still feels great.'
***
There is another element to Ibhais' story. As a World Cup media manager, Ibhais had to deal with journalists like those at The Independent. He outlines how such a state handled such criticism, but also how it influenced him.
'I believed you were being racist,' Ibhais reveals. 'I believed that the US, the UK and Australia were just pissed off because they lost to Qatar.'
If that sounds familiar to anyone who has followed the public discussions on 2022, what follows will be even more familiar.
'The whole media strategy that unfortunately I was part of is called 'drop by drop' – feeding a counter-message. We start by letting you say whatever you want, then plant the seeds of doubt. 'What if it's this? Or maybe this…?' 'Have you checked yourself?' 'How about you come and see for yourself?'
'So a journalist like you would say whatever he wants, but if you add a quote from us, we are part of the conversation.
'If someone critical gets an interview, it's only with top people highly trained with key messaging.
'At the same time, we generate as much positive content as possible. So, your content will appear, but also ours, and then we work on the search-engine optimisation to gradually rise step by step.
'We called it 'flip the pyramid'. And because English-speaking media were so critical, we bypassed them for other languages.'
Ibhais smiles. 'I put that in place… and then suffered from it for a long time.'
So what does Ibhais think about Saturday, and Qatar's PSG potentially becoming European champions?
'At this point, I don't care. Qatar is much more powerful. If I can hold them accountable for what they did to me, it will end there. It's a big fight and there's a lot going on in the world, Ukraine, Gaza… who cares about [Gianni] Infantino?'
The final mention is instructive, as it indicates where much of his anger lies.
'Fifa should take most of the blame. They knew what they were getting into, but stood by it. Fifa's policies open the door for any future hosts to do the same as Qatar. They got away with it, and saw how all the negative attention in the world will not be able to touch them.'
Ibhais hopes that can change through legal action, but his own story now has a positive note, at least. He can hug his family, just as he dreamed of in that Doha cell.