A political refugee who spoke out against a powerful ruling family in the Gulf moved one step closer on Tuesday to being extradited to his native Bahrain by the Thai authorities.

A Thai court formally extended the detention of Hakeem al-Araibi, once a star defender for the Bahraini national soccer team, for 60 days, during which Thailand’s immigration department can prepare his extradition. Mr. Araibi was stopped last month at an airport in Bangkok after a flight from Australia, where he had been living as a legal refugee after fleeing a crackdown on Arab Spring protesters in the small Gulf nation.

Mr. Araibi was initially detained because of an Interpol red notice, an alert from the global police agency meant to inform nations about individuals with active arrest warrants, the Thai authorities said. While red notices are not legally binding, they can be used to detain fugitives so they can be extradited to the country where they were convicted of a crime.

But red notices have also been abused by authoritarian governments that want to bring home critics who have fled abroad, human rights groups say. That is why Interpol over the past several years has instituted reforms that require the agency to vet each person who is added to the red notice database. Refugees like Mr. Araibi are also supposed to be exempt from red notices.