Asian Football Confederation President Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain
Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa was listed as an official FIFA presidential candidate yesterday, while Musa Bility of Liberia was left out after failing an integrity check.
FIFA announced the five declared candidates for the Feb. 26 election, with Michel Platini a potential sixth man. Platini’s candidature was not judged at this stage by the FIFA election committee pending his ethics case.
The five candidates are: Sheikh Salman of Bahrain, Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein of Jordan, Jerome Champagne of France, Gianni Infantino of Switzerland and Tokyo Sexwale of South Africa. They are in the running the replace Sepp Blatter, who announced in June he would step down as president after FIFA was plunged into crisis following U.S. and Swiss corruption investigations.
Sheikh Salman passed an integrity check by FIFA’s election panel despite protests filed by rights groups in Bahrain. Activists claimed Sheikh Salman took part in a process of abusing rights of athlete protesters during pro-democracy events in 2011.
The integrity check weighed “human rights violations” among “potential red flags,” which also included fraudulent behavior and match-fixing, FIFA said in a statement. AP
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