\n Lawyers for two Britons have filed a criminal complaint in Vienna against Interpol's president Ahmed Naser al-Raisi over their alleged arrest and torture, one of their lawyers said on Monday.\n<\/p>\n
\n The two Britons, Matthew Hedges and Ali Issa Ahmad, accuse Raisi of having ultimate responsibility -- as a senior interior ministry security official -- for the torture and arbitrary detention they say they suffered in the United Arab Emirates.\n<\/p>\n
\n Under the principle of universal jurisdiction, the complaint was submitted to Austrian prosecutors in Vienna, where Emirati Raisi is currently attending the body's general assembly.\n<\/p>\n
\n Austrian prosecutors can in theory judge crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture under universal jurisdiction if suspects are on its national territory, regardless of where the crimes took place.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We hope that the Austrian authorities will investigate and prosecute these very serious allegations,\" said lawyer Rodney Dixon, quoted in a statement.\n<\/p>\n
\n The complaint is the fifth of its kind filed against Raisi, following similar ones in Turkey, France, Sweden and Norway.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hedges was arrested in 2018 on suspicion of being a British spy after travelling to the UAE for PhD research. He was pardoned and released days after being handed a life sentence later that same year.\n<\/p>\n
\n He told AFP that he spent seven months in solitary confinement and was forced to take medication as part of \"a very specific strategy to inflict psychological torture\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The UAE has previously denied any mistreatment.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ahmad said he was repeatedly beaten and even stabbed during a month in detention in January 2019, allegedly for enthusiastically supporting the UAE's Gulf rivals Qatar during an AFC Asian Cup football match against Iraq.\n<\/p>\n
\n During his arrest, a policeman cut the Qatari flag out of his T-shirt with a pocketknife, injuring Ahmad in the process, he told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n France, where Interpol is headquartered, opened an investigation into alleged complicity in torture by Raisi in March 2022.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Vienna Public Prosecutor's Office and the Emirati embassy in Vienna did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\n<\/p>\n
\n In November 2021, Raisi was elected Interpol president despite protests from human rights organisations.\n<\/p>\n
\n Monday's complaint also includes the case of Bahraini dissident Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali, who allegedly has been detained and tortured in Bahrain since January 2022.\n<\/p>\n
\n Convicted of \"terrorism-related offences\", Ali was arrested and extradited from Serbia, where he had applied for asylum, following an Interpol Red Notice issued by Bahrain.\n<\/p>\n
\n Raisi was elected Interpol president in November 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawyers for two Britons have filed a criminal complaint in Vienna against Interpol's president Ahmed Naser al-Raisi over their alleged arrest and torture, one of their lawyers said on Monday. The two Britons, Matthew Hedges and Ali Issa Ahmad, accuse Raisi of having ultimate responsibility -- as a senior interior ministry security official -- for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-125319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n