FIFA presidential candidate Sheikh Salman has claimed allegations of human rights abuses against him are "nasty lies" which are part of an agenda against him.
The Asian Football Confederation president is one of eight candidates battling to replace Sepp Blatter in February, but his bid has been hurt by accusations that he was complicit in the detention of footballers and other athletes while head of the Bahrain Football Association.
"I cannot deny something that I haven't done," Salman said. "Such accusations are not just damaging, it's really hurting. Some people have agenda on their table.
"It's not just damaging me, it's damaging the people and the country. These are false, nasty lies that have been repeated again and again in the past and the present."
The allegations date back to the crackdown which followed pro-democracy protests in Bahrain in 2011.
Salman, who backs both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to go ahead in Russia and Qatar respectively, has said he will clean up FIFA's battered reputation if elected.
"With the support I'm going to get we're going to turn it around very quick," he said.
"We have big examples of football organisations around the world - the Premier League, the Bundesliga, even UEFA who have from a football side and a revenue side, it is not even greater than FIFA, but it is handled in a very professional way. And this is what we want to bring to FIFA."
Salman will be up against Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan, former Trinidad and Tobago player David Nakhid, former FIFA deputy general secretary Jerome Champagne, UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino, and Liberian FA president Musa Bility.
UEFA president Michel Platini, the one-time favourite for the job, has submitted his candidacy but is currently banned for 90 days pending a disciplinary hearing into a £1.3million payment signed off by outgoing president Sepp Blatter in 2011.
Another former player, Brazil's Zico, was forced to call an end to his hopes after failing to secure five nominations before the deadline of 11pm GMT on Monday evening.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article