RIATH AL-SAMARRAI: Even if Jordan Henderson takes big Saudi Arabia deal, it shouldn't undermine past battles for equality

Suhail al-Jameel is out now. As in he’s out of prison. He was out in another way before that, which is how he came to be whipped and thrown in jail in the first place. He’s a gay man from Saudi Arabia, you see.

The details of his story are awful, but they are vitally important because sometimes we can get lost in the bigger pictures and wider discussions. Sometimes you need the individual brushstrokes as a means of truly understanding the horrors of what is being washed.

And so, when we talk about Jordan Henderson and Saudi Arabia’s use of sports, we should talk about Suhail al-Jameel. We should mention he was imprisoned in 2018 for ‘parental disobedience’, and how, a year later, having relocated to the United States, he was lured back by the Saudi government under a pretence. According to one of his friends, who campaigned for him and spoke to me on Friday, they told him his mother was dying.

They were particularly interested in him by then and, as such, he was arrested on arrival — he was an influencer and his crime had been to pose on social media in a pair of leopard print shorts. A public indecency, apparently.

His punishment? They lashed him 800 times and locked him up in a maximum-security prison for three years. The friend is certain he will have been tortured. That’s what gay rights means in Saudi Arabia.

But at least he’s out — he was released in October 2022, which happens to be the same month when Henderson was repeating his stance about rainbow laces and ending LGBT discrimination in a pre-match programme.

‘I could not be stronger in my belief that the values we are celebrating — unity, togetherness, inclusion — could not be more in keeping with those of our club and our city,’ he wrote.

‘It also sends the