العربية
6 December 2018 – “The Bahraini government knew that he [Hakeem Al-Araibi] would be arriving in Thailand [on the 27th of November], so they coordinated with Thailand’s permanent secretary of foreign affairs to detain him, pending documents sent from Bahrain,” head of Thailand’s immigration bureau, Police Lieutenant General Surachet Hakparn, said in an interview with BBC Thai yesterday.
Commenting, Yahya Alhadid, President of the Gulf Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (GIDHR) said, “the contradicting stories of the Thai Immigration are worrying and raise our concerns regarding Hakeem Al-Araibi’s fate. We believe that there are no more legal basis for Al-Araibi’s arrest after the Interpol’s Red Notice was lifted. We know that Thai authorities have a bad history sending back refugees to their home countries to face their grim fate, as they did with the Bahraini Ali Haroon’s in December 2014, and with the Turkish teacher Mohammet Sokmen in 2017.”
“What we are more concerned about is that Bahrain was aware of Al-Araibi’s flight. Did Bahrain put him under surveillance or was it spying on him? In any of the cases that brings up the question is Bahrain spying on all its opponents outside the country? If so, this indicates that the safety of all the Bahraini refugees at risk.”