On February 26 last year, Red Star Belgrade played Indija in a Serbian SuperLiga match.
Despite a daytime, midweek kick-off, their ultras – the Delije – took a few thousand to the game.
The group is respected and feared among European ultras for its organisation, anti-establishment
ethos, fierce ultra-nationalism and elaborate choreographies. And so, with 36 minutes on the
clock, the Delije chanted and raised a banner.
“Amr Fahmy. Rest in Peace!”
Amr Fahmy had been the Secretary General of the Confederation
of African Football. He was Egyptian, he supported Al Ahly - Egypt and Africa's
most decorated club - and had held one of the most powerful jobs in world football.
A week before, he had died of complications following a brain tumour.
He was 36 years old.
On the face of it, Fahmy would seem an unlikely figure for the Delije to eulogise. It will also
most likely be the only time the group fly a banner that honours a Muslim who was part of
football's establishment. Although Amr Fahmy wasn't part of the establishment. Not really.
Fifteen years earlier he’d founded Egypt's first
ever ultra group, Ultras Ahlawy. It grew from a few hundred to tens of thousands of people gaining
worldwide respect in the global ultra community for their songs, choreography and dedication. They
made connections with groups all around the world, including with the Delije, a group notoriously
difficult to impress. More importantly, the Ultras Ahlawy he founded would play a role in bringing
down a dictator during the Egyptian revolution, inspiring thousands in a campaign for justice
for fallen comrades. All the while he stayed incognito for fear of being arrested or worse.
For an encore
he later rose to one of the top positions in CAF and exposed the corruption he saw, an act
that cost him his job but eventually led to FIFA reprimanding one of its most powerful figures.
Amr Fahmy was much more than an
ultra or a fan or a bureaucrat.
He was a secret revolutionary.
**
Back in 2007 Egyptian football was passionately supported but disorganised and ripe for change.
Fahmy came from a wealthy Cairene family and was obsessed with football. He studied in Milan
and on the FIFA International Master in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport
at Leicester De Montfort University
But it was Milan that left the biggest mark. The Italian city is the birthplace of ultra culture,
and it was here that he became infatuated with the Italian style of support, with the choreography,
songs and pyrotechnics. He wanted to bring back what he had seen and heard in Milan to Cairo
and to his team, Al Ahly.
By day he worked in CAF's Cairo office learning the ropes. By night he began organising Egypt's
first ultra group, the Ultras Ahlawy. In the Spring of 2007, during the Cairo
Derby against their hated city rivals Zamalek, Ultras Ahlawy, numbering just a few hundred,
unfurled their first choreography: an image of a red devil (representing Ahly), a birthday cake
and “1-6”, to honour the anniversary of Al Ahly humiliating Zamalek by that score in 2002.
Outside the ground he was a polite, bookish young student from a good family.
But once the game began, he transformed into a powerful, infectious presence. He had the ability
to connect with people of different backgrounds, religions and classes, something quite rare in
Egypt, and brought a fierce intelligence, wit, charisma and most importantly pathos to the curva.
Fahmy was a natural leader, and people began to follow.
At the time, Egypt was in a desperate state. The economy was in a mess. The country's long time
autocrat Hosni Mubarak had managed to crush all opposition from political and religious activists.
There was little freedom and football fans – ultras - were seen as little more than hooligans,
and certainly weren’t presumed to pose a political
threat.
But their numbers grew. A few hundred Ultras Ahlawy became tens of thousands, standing in
the north stand of the Cairo International Stadium. Fahmy had gathered a cross section
of Cairo's young: Rich and poor. Male and female. Secular and religious. Christian and Muslim.
Fahmy would always be at the front
leading the songs and chants he helped to write. He would negotiate with the club and with sponsors
for tickets and for help with travel for away days – Tunisia or Casablanca in the African Champions
League; Alexandria or Port Said in the league – making sure that the poorest of the Ultras Ahlawy
could always be there.
Ahly and Zamalek had a fierce rivalry but, increasingly, the real enemy was the authorities.
Ultras globally share a world view that seems them fight authority and oppression. The Ultras Ahlawy,
and other groups like Zamalek's Ultras White Knights, faced the injustices of Mubarak's
hated police force on a weekly basis, enduring beatings and humiliation. Anti-government and
anti-police messages – like ACAB (“All Cops are Bastards”) – began to appear on banners at games.
They became hardened and learned how to fight back, how to avoid arrest
and how to deal with police baton charges or to counteract the effects of tear gas.
“The whole concept of any independent organisation didn’t exist. Not unions. Not political parties.
Nothing was organised. And then we started to organise ultras. It was just sport then. But
to them it was youth, in big numbers – very smart people – who could mobilise quickly. They feared
us. And the more they tried to put pressure on us, the more we grew in cult status … the ultras
taught us to speak our minds.” The skills he learned in opposing Mubarak's police would come
in handy when revolution came to the Middle East.
Many point to the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi as the spark
which lit the fuse of the Arab Spring. Bouazizi was a poor vegetable seller from Tunisia who set
himself on fire in December 2010 when the authorities confiscated his street stall.
But in Egypt there had long been disenchantment with the police. Five months before Bouazizi's
death young people had protested the killing of a young man called Khalid Said. Police said he had
died choking on a block of hashish he had tried to swallow whilst being searched. But when pictures
of his brutally beaten body emerged it was clear he had died violently at the hands of the police,
sparking anger on social media and then on the streets. For many young Egyptians, his death
became a symbol of police impunity.
Agitation grew and a huge protest was arranged for January 25th 2011, to mark National Police Day.
Cairo's ultras initially decided to go individually, rather than under their
groups' banners. But once in Tahrir Square they coalesced, dropping their inter-club rivalry.
And when the police moved in, there was only one group that had any front-line
experience.
Over the following days battles raged in the square, but Mubarak was toppled and
his police were bested. In the heady days of freedom that followed on Tahrir Square,
the Ahlawy's pyro and banners became an integral part of the revolution’s aesthetic.
The most important, though, were the songs that had been crafted by the Ahlawy in the north stand
of the Cairo International Stadium:
They say violence is in our blood How dare we fight for our rights
Stupid regime Hear what we say
Freedom! Freedom!
Freedom!
Fahmy had once sold the ultras Ahlawy songs on CDs out of the trunk of his car outside the Cairo
International Stadium, with the money being sent to a Children's hospital. Now, they had become the
soundtrack of the revolution.
The Football continued in post-revolutionary Egypt, with the ultras in charge. It was flawed
but it was free.
Initially the ultras were seen as hooligans but, as time passed, their role in the revolution was
recognised. But Fahmy's identity remained a closely guarded secret, and not just because
of the anonymity and secrecy of ultra culture – No Face, No Name – nor because he was working
in an administrative role for CAF, but because he would almost certainly have faced arrest or worse
in an Egyptian jail. When Ahly played, Fahmy could be seen at the front wearing his usual disguise:
a football casual style bucket hat and sunglasses. In the rare occasions he spoke to anyone from the
media he would go by the nom de guerre “Assad”.
But the moment where it all went wrong was the opening salvo of Egypt's counter revolution.
On February 1st 2012, 72 Al Ahly fans were killed after a game against Al Masry in Port
Said. The lights of the stadium were turned off shortly before a mob attacked the Ahlawy fans.
Most were crushed to death in a tunnel as they tried to escape. Others
died in the away team's dressing room with Al Ahly's players. One fan died in the arms
of Mohamed Aboutrika, considered to be Egypt's greatest ever player. Prosecutors would later
accuse security officials and police officers from the city - who had been seen as the ugly face
of Mubarak's regime - of being complicit, alongside Al Masry's ultras, in the deaths.
In the weeks afterwards,
Fahmy would be at the front of the daily marches demanding justice. He would visit the parents of
the dead, carrying guilt as the Ahlawy was his idea, and fearing they would blame the group
for the killings. But that never happened.
“They told us that they were proud their sons were loved by so many people,” said Fahmy. “They all
told us one thing: get justice.’
Which is what the Ahlawy did.
They essentially blockaded the league for one year until justice was served.
JFT74 graffiti could be seen all over Cairo. Justice For The 74 was based on Liverpool's
Justice For the 96 campaign for those killed at Hillsborough. The 74 referred to the 72
who died at Port Said, plus two Ahlawy who died during the revolution itself.
Every time the Egyptian FA tried to restart
the league, the Ahlawy was there to shut down the game. Eventually, nearly a year later they
got a semblance of justice. 73 people were charged with a range of offences connected to the deaths,
including the head of security for Port Said, who was initially sentenced to 13 years in prison,
later reduced to 5 years. 21 Al Masry fans were later sentenced to death, although the number
of people punished for what happened at Port Said would be whittled down over the following years.
It was now close to the end of Egypt's revolution.
Mohamed Morsi, the country's first freely elected president, was removed in a military coup,
replaced by the former director of military intelligence Abdel Fattah el Sisi. Once heroes,
the ultras were now seen as enemies of the state. In May 2015 Cairo’s Court of Urgent Matters passed
a law banning them after a private prosecution was brought by Mortada Mansour, the chairman of
Zamalek and a staunch ally of Hosni Mubarak, who had long hated ultras, branding them 'terrorists'.
Hundreds of ultras ended up in jail. A
video was released in 2018, purported made by the Ultras Ahlawy, burning their main banner, the sign
that the group had disbanded. And their Facebook account was deleted too. But it’s unclear whether
this was done under pressure by the authorities.
But no one gave Amr Fahmy up. As the ultras melted back into their lives,
Fahmy embarked on the extraordinary final act of his life. He was chosen as secretary general of
CAF. Although to the outside world it wasn't that much of a surprise. CAF has been headquartered in
Cairo since its inception in 1957. And Fahmy was part of an Egyptian footballing dynasty.
His father, Mustapha Fahmy, was Secretary General of CAF for nearly three decades.
His grandfather Mourad was CAF's first secretary general and a former government minister.
But Fahmy brought with him
a new set of priorities, a moral absolutism that is commonly found in the ultras scene.
He wanted to stamp out corruption and wrongdoing whilst modernising the game. He approached the
job as a fan and not a businessman or bureaucrat. VAR was introduced. Referees fired and a system of
central payments introduced for transparency. Soon he was rubbing powerful people up the wrong way,
including his new boss, CAF president and FIFA vice-president, Ahmad Ahmad, one of the most
powerful figures in world football. When CAF banned Zamalek owner Mortada Mansour for one
year for insulting CAF officials, Mansour went on a rant against Fahmy calling him a “hooligan”
and claiming he was holding a vendetta for his role in banning Egypt's ultras.
But the ban stood.
Soon there was a bigger battle. Fahmy had negotiated a sportswear contact with Puma worth
around $250,000. It seemed a good deal, but he was soon instructed to cancel the contract and accept
a different deal with a little-known French gym manufacturer called Tactical Steel for $1million,
four times the amount. Fahmy was deeply suspicious of the newly inflated contract with the previously
unknown company. He discovered that Tactical Steel was run by a friend of the CAF president Ahmad
Ahmad's personal attaché and that the president had personally pushed through the agreement.
Fahmy was furious, so he began collecting more material. He uncovered more. There were
allegations that Ahmad misappropriated funds to send African FA chiefs from Muslim countries on a
pilgrimage to Mecca. He started putting together a dossier of testimonies from women who alleged they
were sexually harassed by Ahmad.
Just as Fahmy was about to blow the whistle, he found out he was suffering from a brain tumour.
He took a leave of absence and undertook a course of chemo. It was a touch and go but, a year later,
the tumour was in remission and he was back at work. He knew that he had limited time,
and that allies of the president would try to quash the allegations against him and then
remove Fahmy. So, he sent the dossier of evidence, which included allegations of sexual harassment to
FIFA's ethics committee in Zurich. Ahmad has said the allegations are “smears on (his) character"
and that "[t]hey are lies.” At the same time, through a trusted lieutenant, Fahmy began
leaking the documents to the press. It was all there: emails, contracts, the entire paper trail.
And, as he feared, Fahmy was sacked.
The story still made it into the international press. CAF never explained the sacking,
though Ahmad would later suggest Fahmy wasn’t up to the job. But the corruption allegations were
so severe that Ahmad was arrested and questioned in France before being released without charge,
although an investigation is ongoing. Meanwhile, FIFA president Gianni Infantino took the unusual
step of appointing his general secretary Fatma Samoura as a ‘General Delegate for Africa’,
effectively putting her in temporary charge of CAF whilst an ethics investigation was opened
into Ahmad's conduct.
Ahmad clung on, but Fahmy wasn't satisfied. He decided that, if he wanted to really clean up
African football, he needed the top job. So, he announced that he would stand in the 2021 CAF
presidential elections against Ahmad Ahmad. “My campaign will focus on pro-Africa, pro-football
and anti-corruption,” he told the BBC.
But it wasn't to be. Fahmy's tumour returned. In February 2020, three
months after his candidature was announced, Amr Fahmy died. He is survived by his wife
and his three-month-old daughter.
Banners were raised to honour him across Europe, the revolutionary ultra who had built an army on
the terraces before taking his convinctions into one of football's most powerful jobs. Just as the
Delije had in Serbia, Freiburg's famously left wing ultras in Germany held a minute's silence
and also raised a banner. Under a black and white picture of him it read: Amr Fahmy, Your Legacy
Is Immortal.
But that isn't the end of the story. At the end of 2020, FIFA's ethics committee banned Ahmad
from all football related activity for five years. Ahmed denied the accusations and appealed to the
Court of Arbitration for Sport in the hope that he could still stand in CAF’s presidential election.
But his ban was upheld, reduced to 2 years. CaS ruled that Ahmed likely didn’t benefit personally
from the Tactical Steel contract but that he was still guilty of acceptance of cash payments,
bank transfers of bonuses and indemnities without a contractual or regulatory basis.
On top of that, he was guilty of the distribution of gifts and misappropriation of funds related to
the trip to Mecca. Ahmed Ahmed’s disgrace was complete, and his slim chances of running were
over. largely thanks to the trove of documents leaked by whistle-blowers who blew the lid.
It was only
in death that the true story of Fahmy's role in founding the Ahlawy, helping to topple a dictator,
before launching an anti-corruption crusade could safely come out. He wasn't alive to hear the news
that FIFA had banned Ahmad Ahmad, which disbarred him from standing in CAF’s presidential election,
but it was a fitting final act.
Amr Fahmy, the secret revolutionary, had finally got his man.