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The Asian Football Confederation endorsed Gianni Infantino for another term as FIFA president on Friday, reversing a position it took only two months ago when it said he had committed a fundamental breach of trust.

The endorsement came at an extraordinary congress of the confederation in Tokyo. AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa embraced Infantino in front of the membership before telling delegates that the body would support his bid for a fourth term.

"We affirm our full commitment to supporting you and your leadership as you seek a new mandate as the FIFA president," Sheikh Salman said. "You've visited a lot of countries in Asia. I've spoken to a lot of members within this continent. I know your feeling, and I think your commitment is clear as well."

The AFC has 47 member associations, and its members hold a large block of votes in FIFA's 211-member congress. Sheikh Salman signalled that not every member would follow his lead, but said most would. "My feeling is, I'm sure, the feeling of most of my members," he said. "And I've said that to you."

The turn is a sharp one. In August the AFC joined UEFA and CONCACAF, the European and North and Central American confederations, in an open letter that accused Infantino of a "fundamental breach of trust" and called for "leadership that serves football, not seeks to command it". The dispute centred on a now-abandoned plan to raise $4.2 billion by selling a stake in FIFA competitions, including the World Cup, to private investors.

Infantino apologised last week in Zurich to FIFA's 37-member ruling council, which he chairs, for what he described as mistakes in putting that proposal together. The plan has since been scrapped.

Sheikh Salman acknowledged the earlier criticism in his remarks but did not dwell on it. "Gianni, I want to make it clear: yes, we had some issues we spoke about in the past," he said. "But let's not relate the two things together. I think the last few days we met in Zurich, you made it clear that there's a true understanding between us." He added that the past was part of the confederation's history and that lessons had been learned, and that what mattered now was how the two bodies moved forward together.

Infantino, who took the podium afterwards, kept his remarks light but did acknowledge errors. "When you do many things, you do, hopefully, as we did, many good things; you do some mistakes as well," he said. "The important, however, is, as you said, to learn, always from the experience, from the mistakes, to apologise, to move ahead, to come together, to unite."

The loudest applause in the hall, according to accounts of the closed meeting, came when Infantino talked about money flowing to national associations. He said each member federation used to receive $1 million every four years before he took office, and that from 1 January next year the figure would be $25 million.

The FIFA presidential election is due in March. Nominations close on 18 November, and so far no rival candidate has filed against Infantino, who is 56 and is seeking a fourth and final term running to 2031. Africa's confederation has already declared its support. European football's governing body, UEFA, remains opposed, and before the Tokyo meeting there were signs that Infantino was edging towards a simple majority of the 211 federations.

For Asia, the practical effect is that the region's 47 associations, including the Bangladesh Football Federation, are now formally associated with a campaign they had publicly criticised in August. Bangladesh is a member of the AFC and votes through it in FIFA's congress; how individual federations will actually cast their ballots is not public and is not bound by the confederation's position.

Sheikh Salman is also seeking a fourth term as AFC president next year, and Infantino used his own address to praise the Asian official's 13 years in charge and to offer FIFA's support for another term.

Several questions remain open. The first is whether AFC members will follow the endorsement in a secret ballot, since Sheikh Salman himself said he expected most but not all to do so. The second is whether a rival candidate emerges before the 18 November deadline, which would turn a coronation into a contest. The third is whether the governance concerns raised in August have been answered in substance, or only set aside; no published set of conditions or reforms has accompanied the endorsement.

What happens next is largely procedural but consequential. Candidate nominations close in less than four weeks, the FIFA congress votes in March, and the AFC holds its own leadership election next year. Between now and then, Infantino is expected to keep travelling to member associations, a schedule that FIFA's media office has promoted during the campaign and that Sheikh Salman joked on Friday would require a clone to complete.

Bangladesh's prisons are holding at least 407 foreign nationals from 15 countries, including 172 people who have finished their sentences or are otherwise eligible for release but remain in custody because no country has taken them back, prison authorities say.

The largest group is Indian: 238 prisoners, of whom 168 have completed their terms but are still detained, according to figures The Daily Star published on Friday, citing prison officials. Myanmar is second with 133 prisoners, 33 of the 44 foreigners convicted and jailed. Only one Myanmar national is waiting to be repatriated.

The figures expose a gap between Dhaka's records and the Indian mission's. An official in the consular wing of the High Commission of India in Dhaka told the newspaper that only 25 Indians whose sentences are over have been verified and are awaiting return. Bangladesh's foreign ministry has sent lists naming 121 prisoners as Indians who have completed their sentences, but the official said the personal details for most of them are not enough to confirm Indian nationality.

"The HCI is awaiting a response from the foreign ministry," the official said, adding that consular access has been requested for prisoners whose records are too thin to verify and that checks are continuing where more information exists. The mission has asked Dhaka to speed up returns and to give proposed repatriation dates well in advance so Indian authorities can prepare.

Masud Hasan Jewel, the jailer for media and logistics, said the obstacle is clearance from the prisoners' own countries. "They cannot return because clearance from the respective countries has not arrived," he told The Daily Star. Prison authorities say they keep the Home Ministry informed, send names and addresses to the embassies in Dhaka and route letters through the foreign ministry, but responses are inadequate.

Besides Indians and Myanmar nationals, the foreign prison population includes six Nigerians; three each from Pakistan and Malaysia; two each from Tanzania and Peru; and one each from Georgia, the Bahamas, Belarus, Guyana, Congo, Ethiopia and Thailand. Of the 407, 44 are convicts, 191 are awaiting trial and 172 are in the repatriation category. No convict in the group is under a death sentence, prison sources said.

The foreign prisoners were held on charges including drug and human trafficking, gold smuggling, fraud, counterfeit dollar trading, passport offences and illegal VoIP operations. Officials say foreign inmates are kept in separate cells for security, with CCTV watching the area outside their wards. Keeping people after their terms end ties up staff and adds to costs, they say.

The problem is not new. In June, the news agency PTI reported that 148 of 152 foreign prisoners awaiting repatriation after completing their sentences were Indians, based on prison statistics six months old at the time. In 2024, the High Court ordered the government to send home 157 foreigners who had stayed in jail beyond their terms. The issue returned to public attention after six Chinese nationals were arrested at a Cox's Bazar hotel on 4 September over alleged online fraud; in January, the cyber unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police's Detective Branch arrested eight people, five of them Chinese, on similar allegations.

What remains unclear is how many of the 238 Indians are genuinely Indian, how long each has been held beyond sentence, and which countries have simply not replied. Bangladesh has not published a prisoner-by-prisoner breakdown. The Myanmar embassy in Dhaka did not respond to emailed questions from The Daily Star.

The next step rests with the foreign ministry: whether it grants the Indian mission access to the prisoners it says it cannot identify, and whether it sets dates for the 25 already verified. For the prisoners, the wait continues inside cells in a country that says it has finished punishing them but cannot yet let them leave.