Category Archives: Qatar

Minister linked Qatar Airways decision to treatment of Australian women at Doha airport, FoI reveals

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Exclusive: federal government coordinated letters to the women and Qatari officials when they formally rejected the request for extra routes

The coordinated timing of two key letters sent by the federal government about its decision to block extra flights for Qatar Airways, released under freedom of information, raise fresh questions about the role an incident at Doha airport played in the rejection.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat) was consulted over a letter that the transport minister, Catherine King, was preparing to send to five Australian women suing Qatar Airways, telling them the airline’s push for more flights had been rejected, FoI documents reveal.

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Australia agrees to clear-the-air talks with Qatar over controversial airline decision

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Exclusive: Comes after heated Senate inquiry hearings told application for extra flights by the Gulf had been “unfairly rejected”

Australian bureaucrats will schedule a meeting with Qatari officials to discuss the Albanese government’s controversial decision to reject Qatar Airways’ request to almost double its flight operations to Australia.

Senate inquiry hearings this week revealed that the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) – which lodged the request for an additional 28 weekly flights to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth – had requested consultations with the Australian department of infrastructure and transport.

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Petrostate windfall tax would help poor countries in climate crisis, says Brown

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Former British PM calls for 3% levy on oil and gas export revenues of biggest producers to generate $25bn a year for global south

Petrostates should pay a small percentage of their soaring oil and gas revenues to help poor countries cope with the climate crisis, the former UK prime minister Gordon Brown has urged.

Countries with large oil and gas deposits have enjoyed a record bonanza in the last two years, amounting to about $4tn (£3.3tn) last year for the industry globally. Levying a 3% windfall tax on the oil and gas export revenues of the biggest-producing countries would yield about $25bn a year.

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Qatar Airways chief says Australia’s decision to block flights ‘very unfair’ after pandemic support

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Akbar Al Baker says request for more flights into Australia was ‘legitimate’ at a time the airline was ‘so supportive of Australia’

Qatar Airways says the Australian government’s decision to block its request for extra flights was “very unfair” given the airline’s support for Australians during the pandemic.

The airline’s bid to fly an extra 21 services into Australia’s major airports was rejected with ministers citing a range of reasons including it being contrary to the national interest.

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US agrees to release $6bn in Iran funds as part of deal to free detained Americans

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Sanctions waiver will allow transfer of $6bn in frozen Iranian assets from South Korea to Qatar, in effort to win release of quintet

The Biden administration has issued a waiver to allow the transfer of $6bn in frozen Iranian funds from South Korea to Qatar as part of a deal to free five Americans detained in Iran.

The waiver was a necessary step towards advancing a previously announced deal, which also involves the freeing of five Iranian citizens imprisoned in the US, mostly for sanctions-busting offenses.

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Moroccan man jailed for five years for criticising king in Facebook posts

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Court’s sentence over posts denouncing country’s ties with Israel is ‘harsh and incomprehensible’, says lawyer

A Moroccan internet user has been sentenced to five years’ jail for criticising the king on Facebook over the country’s normalisation of ties with Israel, his lawyer has said.

Said Boukioud, 48, was jailed on Monday for posts denouncing the normalisation “in a way that could be interpreted as criticism of the king”, lawyer El Hassan Essouni said on Wednesday, adding that he had appealed.

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£19.3bn of fossil fuels imported by UK from authoritarian states in year since Ukraine war

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As Russian oil and gas imports fell petrostates including UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia increased exports to UK

UK fossil fuel imports from authoritarian petrostates surged to £19.3bn in the year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it can be revealed.

Efforts to end the purchasing of oil and gas from Russia appear to have resulted in a surge in imports from other authoritarian regimes, including Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to data from the Office for National Statistics analysed by DeSmog.

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World Cup security guards still jailed in Qatar after dispute over unpaid wages

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Workers at World Cup 2022 venues fired as tournament ended and allegedly jailed or deported after trying to claim unpaid wages

Three World Cup security guards who were detained while trying to resolve a dispute over unpaid wages are still being held in Qatar four months after their arrest.

Shakir Ullah and Zafar Iqbal from Pakistan, and an Indian national, have allegedly been sentenced to six months in prison and fined 10,000 riyals (£2,220) each.

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UK arms sales reach record £8.5bn as global tensions escalate

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More than half of weapons exports were for repressive regimes such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as sales doubled last year

British arms exports doubled during 2022 to a record £8.5bn according to the only publicly available official figures, reflecting escalating geopolitical uncertainties and fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The largest destination for UK-made weaponry was Qatar, which bought £2.7bn-worth, and 54% went to countries designated as “not free” by the human rights group Freedom House. These include Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as Qatar.

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UN labour rights watchdog facing backlash over Qatar conference nomination

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Exclusive: Qatari minister expected to take presidency of ILO event despite bribery investigation

The UN’s labour rights watchdog, the International Labour Organization (ILO), is facing a backlash over the nomination of Qatar to chair its flagship annual conference despite a police investigation into alleged bribery of EU lawmakers by the Gulf state.

The Guardian has learned that Qatar’s minister of labour, Ali bin Saeed bin Samikh Al Marri, is expected to take the presidency of the ILO’s international labour conference in Geneva in June, an annual event intended to advance global standards on workers’ rights.

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Al Jazeera English announces plans to move from London’s Shard to Qatar

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Move of London’s live broadcast centre to Doha could involve dozens of job losses

Al Jazeera English plans to close its live broadcast centre that operates from London’s Shard skyscraper and move programming to Qatar, with the possible loss of dozens of UK-based jobs.

In an email to staff, the network’s managing director, Giles Trendle, said Al Jazeera was “looking to undertake a restructure involving the move of AJE live programming to Doha. The move would include the news bulletins between 1900GMT and 2300GMT produced from London, and The Stream programme produced from Washington DC.”

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Security guards in Qatar still being paid as little as 35p an hour

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Fifa and Qatar claimed the World Cup would transform workers’ rights, but 100 days on from the final, the Guardian has found that for some it has become worse

Security guards employed by a company with contracts at sites linked to the World Cup in Qatar are allegedly still being paid as little as 35 pence an hour, four months after the Guardian first revealed their plight.

In a Guardian investigation, published on the eve of the World Cup, the guards alleged they were being subjected to abusive practices, including overtime pay below the legal minimum. Interviews this month with security guards employed by Al Nasr Star Security Services at multiple sites suggests the issue of illegal pay remains.

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Manchester United fans and rights groups raise fears over Qatar-led ownership bid

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The Gulf state bank’s offer to buy the English Premier League team has been criticised by humanitarian organisations, LGBTQ+ fan clubs and advocacy groups for football governance

A Qatar-led bid to take over Manchester United should not be entertained because of concerns about state influence and human rights abuses in the country, rights groups say.

Fears about an offer to buy the club have been raised by Amnesty International’s Manchester branch, which said it had been contacted by fans who were very worried by the news.

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Gulf royals own more than £1bn of UK property via tax havens

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New government register shows how offshore jurisdictions used for ownership of nearly 200 properties including hotels and country estates

The royal families of Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar own more than £1bn of UK property via offshore jurisdictions, such as Jersey and the British Virgin Islands, the Guardian can reveal.

Nearly 200 properties, including hotels, London mansions and country estates, belong to a few small but super-rich dynasties, according to analysis of a new government register that reveals who is behind offshore companies that own UK property.

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Irish family reveal six-year legal battle in Qatar over daughter’s severe injuries

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Birmingham-based Soffe family still fighting for compensation after fire in Gulf state left Elizabeth with life-threatening burns

A Birmingham family have revealed the distress they have endured in a six-year legal battle in Qatar to gain compensation for the severe injuries experienced by their youngest daughter when they lived in the Gulf state.

Elizabeth Soffe, now eight, received life-threatening burns as a baby in a fire at her family’s villa in Al Waab, near the country’s capital, Doha, in 2014.

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Cash for influence inquiry homes in on Brussels meeting days before World Cup

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Ex-MEP allegedly called on friends to ask questions at meeting to lead Qatari minister ‘on a known path’

Belgian police seized nearly €1.5m in cash from homes and hotels in Brussels last month, allegedly paid by Qatar to sway decisions in the European parliament. Now a series of reports have suggested what that money may have been attempting to buy.

Investigators have homed in on a meeting of the European parliament’s subcommittee on human rights on 14 November 2022, where Qatar’s minister for labour, Ali bin Samikh al-Marri, defended his country’s record on workers’ rights.

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Greek MEP Eva Kaili to stay in custody after corruption charges, says court

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Kaili is one of four charged with corruption and money laundering in relation to Qatar and will go on trial in Belgium

Eva Kaili, the Greek member of the European parliament at the centre of a cash for influence scandal implicating Qatar, will remain in jail pending trial, a Belgian court has decided.

“In its order this morning, the pre-council chamber extended the pre-trial detention of EK by one month,” said a statement from the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office. If Kaili chooses to appeal against the decision within 24 hours, she will appear before a chamber at the Brussels court of appeal within 15 days.

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David Beckham makes first statement on his Qatar World Cup involvement

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Former England captain, whose role as ambassador was criticised by LGBTQ+ community, said he believes sport is ‘force for good’

David Beckham has made his first public statement on his controversial involvement with the World Cup host nation Qatar, telling a US newspaper through a spokesperson that he “has always believed that sport has the power to be a force for good in the world”.

“We understand that there are different and strongly held views about engagement in the Middle East but see it as positive that debate about the key issues has been stimulated directly by the first World Cup being held in the region,” the statement continued.

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Family pay tribute to British man who died in incident on Qatar oil rig

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A second Briton was injured and treated in hospital, while a third was detained following the ‘non-work related incident’

The family of a 38-year-old man who died after a “non-work related incident” involving three Britons onboard an oil rig in Qatar have paid tribute to a “one-of-a-kind, beautiful soul”.

Robert Robson, of Tyne and Wear, was working on the Seafox Burj oil rig off the coast of Qatar when he died after an incident in the early hours of Monday.

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Messi business: how ‘sportswashing’ could land Saudi Arabia the 2030 World Cup

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Qatar has written the playbook on how to further geopolitical aims by hosting a Fifa event. Riyadh is taking notes

If Lionel Messi lifts the World Cup trophy it will not only represent a victory for Argentina’s diminutive captain but his unlikely new benefactor: Saudi Arabia. The team may have inflicted a shock, humiliating defeat upon Argentina in their opening game of the tournament, but Messi, paid to be an ambassador for Saudi under a reported £25m contract, could deliver a long-term prize worth far more – a chance to emulate Qatar and host the 2030 World Cup.

After the tiny gas-rich emirate won the right to host the World Cup in December 2010, in circumstances mired in controversy, Qatar wrote the playbook on using the soft power of the world’s biggest sporting event to further its aims – from the big spending western brands which come with the tournament to the attempts to improve its image on human rights.

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