England’s top-flight football competition, the Premier League, has for the third time rejected a grassroots human rights petition demanding that it hold Manchester City’s owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan accountable for the United Arab Emirates’ documented military backing of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group accused of genocide in Darfur.
Mansour, who is a senior member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, UAE deputy prime minister and brother of the UAE’s president, purchased Manchester City in 2008, injecting hundreds of millions in investment that transformed the club from a mid-table side into one of the most dominant and successful football teams on the global stage. The purchase was framed from its inception as a soft power proxy for the UAE, with then-CEO Garry Cook telling Abu Dhabi’s negotiating team that the club would serve as the nation’s global public brand. Backed by leading UK politicians including former prime minister Tony Blair and former chancellor George Osborne, the investment also spawned large-scale urban regeneration deals between Manchester City Council and Abu Dhabi-linked entities. However, a 2024 University of Sheffield investigation revealed profits from these public-private deals were diverted to Abu Dhabi-controlled shell companies registered in the Jersey offshore tax haven, with working-class residents of east Manchester seeing almost no tangible benefit from the partnerships.
The controversy over the club’s ties to the UAE’s foreign policy comes as Manchester City already faces unprecedented scrutiny after the Premier League concluded the club committed 114 serious breaches of the league’s financial fair play rules between 2009 and 2018. An independent regulatory commission found the club hid more than £830 million ($1.1 billion) in disguised, off-books funding via a web of “sham” commercial contracts and fraudulent arrangements. Manchester City has formally appealed the ruling and continues to deny all wrongdoing, claiming it holds incontrovertible evidence to prove its innocence. The Premier League has declined to issue any further comment on the case or the rejected petition.
The petition, first launched in January 2024 by UK-based human rights advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide outside Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, calls on the Premier League’s chief executive, governing board and all member clubs to confront Mansour directly over the UAE’s long-running military support for the RSF, which has been mired in a brutal civil war with Sudan’s official armed forces since April 2023. The conflict has spiraled into the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis, displacing more than 10 million people and leaving millions facing acute famine.
CSW confirmed that after rejecting initial submissions of the petition in April and May, the Premier League’s security staff explicitly said they had received formal orders not to accept any materials from the group during a second delivery attempt. A third rejection was issued on 14 October, 2024, marking the latest failure of activists to push for accountability.
Multiple independent investigations, including reporting from Middle East Eye, the United Nations’ independent fact-finding mission, and major international outlets, have confirmed the UAE has systematically shipped weapons and military support to the RSF through third countries including Somaliland, Ethiopia, Libya and Chad. The New York Times has documented that Mansour maintains direct, regular contact with RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. Additional investigations have found an Emirati private firm hired Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside RSF troops. The UAE has repeatedly denied any involvement in the Sudan conflict, despite the overwhelming body of open-source evidence confirming its role.
The UN fact-finding mission has formally concluded that RSF operations in Darfur bear all the “hallmarks of genocide”, including systematic mass executions, widespread sexual violence, ethnic cleansing, and extortion of civilian populations. Last October, RSF forces captured el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, after a weeks-long siege that left hundreds of civilians dead. Activists note the third rejection of the petition came just under two weeks before the one-year anniversary of this atrocity.
Addressing reporters during the latest attempt to deliver the petition, CSW’s Middle East and Africa team leader Khataza Gondwe stressed the urgency of the demand, noting “Never again should mean never again. But in this instance, it seems that it is over and over again.”
Abdallah Idriss Abugarda, president of the Darfur Diaspora Association, tied the call for human rights accountability to the ongoing financial fair play controversy surrounding the club. “We are here today, not against football, but for justice, human rights and accountability… Our message to the Premier League is clear: human rights must matter as much as the financial rules. No club, no owner, no powerful institution should be beyond accountability,” he said.
The unfolding situation has also drawn new scrutiny to former Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who left office earlier in 2024. Last week, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority released records of meetings Burnham held with Manchester City officials, including club chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak, but omitted records of two private hospitality dinners Burnham attended with the Emirati executive at Manchester City matches in 2017 and 2018.