Wife of Qatar’s detained Sheikh Talal makes desperate plea to UN
The wife of a Qatari royal languishing in a Doha prison made a desperate appeal to the UN Human Rights Council Monday for her husband’s release.
Sheikh Talal bin Abdul Al-Thani, a grandson of the former
emir Sheikh Ahmad bin Ali Al-Thani, has been in prison for seven years.
His wife, Asma Arian, says he has been tortured and
ill-treated by the Qatari authorities and denied medical care as his health
deteriorates.
She delivered a statement to the Geneva-based council on a
report by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on Qatar, which it visited
last year.
“He’s been arbitrarily detained in Qatar for over seven
years — years of suffering for our children and me, and torture and despair for
him,” Arian, who lives in Germany with her four children, said.
“He’s in incommunicado detention and suffers from severe
medical conditions he developed in prison.
“My husband needs urgent medical care and a lawyer he
chooses freely.”
Arian says her husband was detained in 2013 after he
requested his inheritance from the government. She said Sheikh Talal was duped
into signing security checks that it said would underwrite commercial projects
through which he would be paid.
“Their projects proved fictitious, designed to trap my
husband in fabricated charges of defaulting on his debts,” she said.
He was given a 22 year prison sentence without a proper
trial.
The UN working group’s report explicitly criticized Doha for
imprisoning large numbers of people for defaulting on debt and the use of
“guarantee cheques” to secure loans.
“We call on Qatar to abide by the recommendations of the
working group and release my husband immediately, and respect his rights while
he’s in detention,” Arian said.
The report made a series of recommendations for Qatar,
including raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14 and
abolishing the system of male guardianship over women.
Sheikh Talal’s plight has been linked to the decades of
infighting within the Qatari royal family.
His grandfather, who reigned from 1960 until 1972, was
deposed by his cousin Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad, grandfather of Qatar’s current
emir, Sheikh Tamim.
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