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Bin Hammam launches appeal against ban

The 62-year-old Qatari was given a lifetime ban from football by the world governing body last month after being found guilty of bribing Caribbean officials during his bid to oust incumbent FIFA President Sepp Blatter.

In a statement on his personal blog, the former Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president said he had appealed after FIFA released the motivated decisions of the Ethics Committee, who banned him, last week.

"I have submitted my case to the FIFA Appeals Committee, not hoping for justice to prevail but as a protocol to enable me to obtain access to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS)," the Qatari said.

"After all, the panel from the Appeals Committee is decided by my opponent and in this case, as previously, the judge is the rival. Therefore, I should not exaggerate hope for a fair decision.

"Going through the motivated decisions, we found them to be deeply flawed and raises grave doubts on whether any decision-making body of FIFA has sufficient independence to ensure a fair decision based solely on evidence and applicable laws.

"Based on our experiences, we expect the appeal process and decision to take approximately two months, not because this time is necessarily needed but more due to FIFA's tactical games and abuse of power, as evident throughout this case."

"When I was suspended on 29 May on charges of bribery and vote buying, it was supposedly based on strong evidence in the investigation conducted by Collins and Collins and directed by [FIFA General Secretary] Jerome Valcke and [CONCACAF General Secretary and FIFA Executive Committee member] Chuck Blazer.

"Yet despite the alleged strong evidence conclusive enough to justify my suspension and deprived me of going to the Congress and running as a FIFA Presidential candidate surprisingly enough, FIFA went for another investigation again, this time by Freeh group, to look for evidence which they never had in the first instance to suspend me.

"But as I have vowed before