• Zahir Belounis expected in Paris on Friday
• Two-year struggle to leave Arab state is over

Zahir Belounis, the French footballer trapped in Qatar without pay due to the country’s sponsorship system for migrant workers, has been granted an exit visa after a two-year struggle.

Mahdi Belounis, the player’s brother, has confirmed that an exit visa has been granted and that he expects him to arrive at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris with his wife and two young children on Friday.

Belounis had been in dispute with his former club, al-Jaish, for more than two years over unpaid wages but, even after agreeing to give up his claim to the money, has not been allowed to leave the country under the kafala sponsorship system that ties migrant workers to their employers.

In a desperate plea to the Qatar 2022 ambassadors Pep Guardiola and Zinedine Zidane, highlighted by the Guardian, Belounis said he had been “living a nightmare” for the past two years.

“Imagine what I am going through every day in a house that is half empty – because when they promised me that they would give me my exit visa, I sold my furniture – and when I see the look in my daughters’ eyes, I feel ashamed, I feel disgusted with myself for inflicting such conditions on them,” he wrote.

Groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have been pressing the Qatari authorities to allow Belounis to return home, believing that his case is emblematic of the problems faced by thousands of other migrant workers whose employers refuse to allow them to leave.

The decision to allow Belounis to leave came as the global players’ union Fifpro was due to arrive in the country with representatives from the International Trade Union Confederation for four days of talks aimed at securing his passage home.

The organisation had said it was “seriously concerned by allegations of human rights violations in the construction of World Cup stadiums and related infrastructure” that have become a major issue for Fifa and the World Cup organisers since in-depth reports by human rights organisations and an investigation by the Guardian into the plight of Nepalese migrant workers highlighted the scale of the problem.

The ITUC has warned that 4,000 workers could die before a ball is kicked without serious reform of the system to hold subcontractors to new laws and the abolition of the rules of kafala.

After a meeting with the Emir of Qatar this month, Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter, said it would host an “amazing World Cup” and was “on the right track” with regard to workers’ rights.

But a week later he met with the ITUC and others in Zurich and Fifa put out a statement in which it said the situation was “unacceptable” and insisted “fair working conditions with a lasting effect must be introduced quickly in Qatar”.

This week, on a trip to Kuala Lumpur, he appeared to blame the European media for “attacking” Qatar over the issue and claimed the focus on workers’ rights was “not fair”.

The Qatar Football Association has denied Belounis’s claims, saying that it had helped him recover unpaid wages when he played for another club in the country but that he had never lodged a complaint about al-Jaish.

• World Cup 2022

Owen Gibson

theguardian.com