The proof FIFA gave the 2022 World Cup to sponsors of terror

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE withdrew ambassadors from Qatar in protest at country's support for destabilising factions



The sermons of extreme Islamist cleric Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi are regularly broadcast on Qatari state television

Al-Qaradawi is banned from entering the USA, UK and France

On March 5 this year, a strange thing happened. Several countries withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar. They did so in protest at the country’s support for destabilising factions in the region, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and its continued embracement of an extreme Islamist cleric, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whose sermons are regularly broadcast on state television.



Al-Qaradawi has been banned from entering the United States since 1999, from the United Kingdom since 2008 and even Qatar’s great western ally France banned him in 2012.



So more western interference, one might presume. We haven’t a great track record in the region, to be fair. If Qatar is rigidly committed to self-determination, it cannot end up worse off than Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan. Except it wasn’t the western ambassadors who went home.



Announcement: FIFA president Sepp Blatter named Qatar as the hosts of the 2022 World Cup in December 2010

The countries protesting about Qatari associations were Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. If FIFA possessed alarm bells, and it is unlikely, they should be ringing now.



Middle East politics is horribly complex. Some of the motivations here involve self-preservation as much as moral outrage. Al-Qaradawi believes the Muslim Brotherhood ‘righteous’ and as that organisation brought down the Mubarak government in Egypt, similar agitation is greatly feared in other Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE.



This year the UAE has sentenced 30 Emiratis and Egyptians to prison sentences for forming a Muslim Brotherhood cell. They regard it as a terrorist organisation. The very least that can be said, though, is that Qatar has controversial allegiances: the Al-Nusra Front in Syria that pledges loyalty to Al-Qaeda, for instance.



Of course, we’re just jealous. That is the default reaction. Jealous because England didn’t get the World Cup. That is why we bring up the heat, the claims of bribes, the worker deaths and the long-standing links to terrorism and terrorists that set Qatar apart from many of the countries in the Gulf.



Mention that Qatari World Cup officials are palling around with and financing the powerful anti-Semites of Hamas, query whether we should be in business with these people, and the presumption in some quarters is that it is all part of a cynical ploy to get the tournament by the back door.



It isn’t. It is more serious than that. Much more serious, even, than simply placing the odd Qatari World Cup committee member in a room with a Hamas government official who advocates the killing of Jews, as reported in this column last week, more serious than a former president of the Qatar Football Association being named by the United States as a significant Al-Qaeda financier.



Since the early 1990s, the government of Qatar, senior leaders and royal family members have provided material support and safe haven to known members of Al-Qaeda, affiliated groups and other violent extremists. This is where the World Cup is going. The least of our worries, actually, is whether it is hot or plays havoc with the Premier League calendar.

Extreme: The sermons of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi are regularly broadcast on Qatari state television

Qatar is a hugely wealthy state with a lot of foreign business partners ready to excuse them. The argument runs that their foreign policy is unpredictable or simply independent. They are with Al-Qaeda’s allies in Syria but against them in Yemen. They talk to all sides.



Yet, increasingly, even in the Middle East, neighbouring governments see a pattern emerging. Qatar backs the extremists with funds (Hamas), weapons (Al Nusra) and uses its charities to raise funds for jihadist groups.



The devil is in the details, as ever. Secret service cables that came out as part of Wikileaks detail Bahrain’s worry about Qatar’s links to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula. King Hamad confronted Adam Ereli, the US ambassador to Bahrain, with this fear in an hour-long conversation on January 12, 2010 — the same year the 2022 World Cup is awarded.



Venue: An artists's impression of the Al-Khor stadium in Doha which will host the World Cup

Hamad informed Ereli that at a meeting of the Gulf heads of state in December, he had told Qatar’s representative, Emir Hamad Bin Al Khalifa Al Thani, ‘We need to be clear about the threat — and know who you are with.’ The Emir replied: ‘I need to be in touch with them.’ He meant Al-Qaeda.



The cable states that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia then asked: ‘Are you mad?’ Increasingly, one feels we must be, too.



Khalid Sheik Mohammed, regarded as ‘the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks’ according to the United States Commission Report, worked as a project engineer at the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water between 1992 and 1996, and lived for some of that time on a farm belonging to government official Abdullah bin Khaled al Thani, who had invited him in from Pakistan.



Awaiting trial: Khalid Sheik Mohammed is regarded as 'the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks'

Abdullah bin Khaled al Thani was Qatar’s Minister of Interior from 2001 to June 2013, including the time of the successful World Cup bid. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is now detained awaiting trial for his part in terrorist atrocities including the 9/11 attacks, the 1993 assault on the World Trade Centre, the Bali bombings and the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.



Abdullah bin Khaled al Thani was described by former CIA agent Robert Baer as an Al- Qaeda ‘sympathiser and fellow traveller’. Former US Counterterrorism Director Richard Clarke thought him to have ‘great sympathy for Osama Bin Laden and great sympathy for terrorist groups’. He alleged the minister was ‘using his personal money and ministry money to transfer to Al-Qaeda front groups that were allegedly charities’.



This man was a senior figure in the Qatar government at the time they hopped into bed with FIFA, do not forget.

Terror: Khalid Sheik Mohammed is detained awaiting trial for his part in atrocities including the 9/11 attacks

There are files full of this stuff if you know where to look. A United Nations website, ReliefWeb, which provides information on humanitarian relief efforts, revealed that Qatar Charity collaborated with the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Education in Gaza in 2009 to build Hamas-run schools.



According to reports on Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera, and multiple other public sources including Hamas government websites, these schools now provide military training to students as part of the Al-Futuwwa programme.



On January 7, 2014, the Ministry of Education announced that 13,000 students would take part this year. Activities include learning how to load and shoot AK-47 rifles, how to scale buildings using rope and other practical military studies, some involving in the field experience with members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade, the military-terrorist wing of Hamas.



In 2003, a court hearing the case against Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian American who used charitable donations to fund fighters in Bosnia, was told by a former Al-Qaeda operative that the Qatar Charitable Society, funded in part by the Qatar government, provided funding for early Al-Qaeda operations.



Host city: Doha will have six stadiums hosting matches at the 2022 World Cup

There are simply too many links, this network is too great, for us to pretend these are isolated instances of misguided individuals operating independently of government policy; or that this is merely part of talking to all sides in an argument. The questions now raised are too big to be dismissed as a silly smear campaign motivated by disgruntled bid failures.



Qatar has systematic and long-standing associations with some extremely dangerous people and information to support these allegations are established and in the public domain. Even if these many tentacles were unknown, Qatar was still handed the 2022 World Cup in controversial circumstances. Piecing this all together makes FIFA’s decision scarcely believable.



This goes beyond discussions around whether a stadium can be air-conditioned, Jack Warner is a crook, or the calendar is disrupted. Even the alleged tolls of dead construction workers are as nothing compared to what might have been financed and plotted by some of Qatar’s friends.



Official: Jack Warner is a former vice-president of FIFA

The laziest, most dangerous attitude, therefore, is that nothing can be done, or this is just the western world appalled that a football tournament has gone to the Middle East.



In the main, it really doesn’t matter where the World Cup goes. It just shouldn’t go to them.

GO FORTH ARSENE AND WIN THE CUP

There is one way out for Arsene Wenger now and it is very clear. His team must win the FA Cup. They played Chelsea like inferiors on Saturday, just as they did Manchester City, just as they did Liverpool. And with good reason. They are inferiors.



They are a club that no longer win trophies, that get by in fourth and invest only when the panic button is pressed. And that is how they play the elite clubs. As if they are the true little horses of the title race. They need to feel they belong in this company but that cannot happen without success.



Arsenal are a better team than Wigan, Hull City or Sheffield United. This is their chance.

Tough day: Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger (right) watches his side crash to a 6-0 defeat to Chelsea

Football’s many accountants argue that a Champions League finish is a bigger trophy than winning the FA Cup, yet Arsenal have tried to build confidence around consistent Champions League finishes, and where has it got them?



Manchester City 6 Arsenal 3, Liverpool 5 Arsenal 1, Chelsea 6 Arsenal 0 — these are not the results of players that believe.



Arsenal capitulate against the biggest teams. Forget the hash made of the sending-off, Arsenal played Chelsea 11 against 11 for 17 minutes on Saturday and lost 3-0.

Jubilation: Chelsea players celebrate as they thrash Arsenal 6-0 at Stamford Bridge on Saturday

They were sloppy, ineffectual, weak, timid — men expecting defeat. It has happened too many times against the biggest teams this season. City scored four in 66 minutes, Liverpool four in 20, Chelsea four in 42.



The only way they pull out of this malaise now is to win at Wembley, twice. This makes them successful again, giving the players a shared positive experience on which to build next season.



A consistent return to the Champions League is not the same as a trophy and if losing 6-0 to Chelsea on the occasion of Wenger’s 1,000th match does not underline that, what will? Arsenal are still going backwards and soon may be overtaken by a fourth rival.

Tribute: Arsenal fans hold up a sign to mark Wenger's 1,000th game in charge on Saturday

Manchester United might not be ordinary again next season, and then what?



Arsenal must become inspired — and true inspiration comes from something more tangible than banking another UEFA cheque.

BROAD BLAME GAME MISSES THE POINT

Stuart Broad was very upset with the umpires after England’s first defeat, by New Zealand, in the Twenty20 World Cup.



Broad, England’s captain, thought the game should have been suspended when thunder and lightning closed in after the fourth over of New Zealand’s innings. The upshot would have been ‘no result’.



Instead, a fifth over was bowled, the minimum amount required to use the Duckworth-Lewis calculation, and New Zealand won.

Upset: England captain Stuart Broad speaks with umpire Aleem Dar (centre) and Brendon McCullum (right)

‘It was distinctly average decision-making by the umpires,’ said Broad, overlooking a salient fact. At the start of the fifth over New Zealand were 10 off the required run rate, while at the end of it they were comfortably ahead, having struck 16. Broad was the bowler.



Had he been tighter, England would have won on Duckworth-Lewis. But to admit this would entail taking some of the blame himself, rather than handing it all to the officials.

Unhappy: England were defeated by New Zealand on the Duckworth-Lewis method in their World T20 opener

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT...

It is not so much a ballot sheet as a ransom note. The supporters’ vote on changing the name from Hull City to Hull Tigers makes it impossible to oppose the switch, without also standing against owner Assem Allam.



Yes to Hull Tigers, no to Hull Tigers. The choices were simple enough.



Instead, to support the move, fans must tick an option that reads: ‘Yes to Hull Tigers with the Allam family continuing to lead the club.’ By implication, no to Hull Tigers is therefore also no to Allam ownership, although the family are not brave enough to overtly link the two. They prefer veiled threats and brinkmanship.



If they wanted to play fair, they could have made the issue black or white. None of this, ‘Yes to Hull Tigers and we won’t shoot this puppy’. Yet in any fair vote, they lose. And they know it.

Vote: Hull City chairman Assem Allam is running a ballot on the propsed name change to Hull Tiger

Mike Ashley turned up at No 5 in the list of Britain’s richest families, his wealth estimated at £3.3billion.



Instantly it was asked why a man worth so much is prepared to hawk Newcastle United’s famous shirt to Wonga for just £8m.



The answer is simple: because of financial fair play he could not invest his own money in the club, even as a gift, even if he wanted to. Thank Michel Platini for that.