Qatar World Cup ambassador calls homosexuality "damage in the mind"

Berlin — An ambassador for the World Cup in Qatar has described homosexuality as a "damage in the mind" in an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF only two weeks before the opening of the soccer tournament in the Gulf state, highlighting concerns about the conservative country's treatment of gays and lesbians.   Former Qatari national team player Khalid Salman told a German reporter in an interview that being gay is "haram," or forbidden in Arabic, and that he has a problem with children seeing gay people.   Excerpts of the television interview were shown Monday on the ZDF news program Heute Journal. The full interview, which is part of a documentary, will be shown Tuesday on ZDF.   Germany's interior minister condemned Salman's remarks.   "Of course such comments are terrible, and that is the reason why we are working on things in Qatar hopefully improving," Nancy Faeser said Tuesday.

About 1.2 million international visitors are expected in Qatar for the tournament, which has faced criticism and skepticism ever since the gas-rich emirate was selected as host by FIFA in December 2010. Concerns about LGBTQ tourists attending the World Cup have also been expressed for a long time.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) is among the organizations that have accused Qatar of arbitrarily arresting and abusing LGBTQ people. The rights group said in late October that it had documented six cases of "severe and repeated" beatings and five cases of sexual harassment in police custody between 2019 and 2022. CBS News has not verified the claims of violence.