Qatar tortures and kills its opponents in prison, flouts human rights

Mustafa Kamel

The Qatari regime continues its repressive campaigns and systematic abuse campaigns in an attempt to revoke the nationality of members of the Qatari tribes. Doha’s lust for repression also extended to the foreigners who threw their bad fortune on the path of the Qatari regime’s patrons. The past years have witnessed Doha distorting its opponents and polishing its image on social networking sites around the world by recruiting cyber armies. Recently, the task of these cyber armies has been to promote pro-regime content.

In Qatari prisons

For six years in the absence of Qatari prisons, Frenchman Jean-Pierre Marongiu, who used to run a training and management company in the Qatari capital, Doha, before disagreeing with his Qatari partner, spent inside Qatar’s prisons and his health deteriorated. Marongiu continues his insistence on uncovering the truth of his case, and the latest of this information is that he has already paid part of his debts, before the Qatari government decided to “unload his assets” to incapacitate him from fulfilling his obligations. He continues his desperate attempts to reveal more details about his case and the conditions of his detention, along with the killers and ISIS terrorist operatives.

Marongiu’s wife provided details of her husband’s arrest after she denounced his tragic situation, saying that the dispute between the two partners began because of the percentage of share distribution, but the Qatari partner belongs to the ruling family and aspired to seize the company and used his influence to put pressure on Marongiu, who refused to be blackmailed.

Marongiu warned that the real danger is the impact of Qatari investments on France’s national security and culture, especially after the revelation of the generous Qatari funding of Brotherhood affiliates in France that call for extremism, explaining that Doha is still seeking to silence its voice so as not to expose the regime to the injustice it has been subjected to. This is evidenced by the fact that a French journalist (he did not name him) supported his cause and helped him write the book “The End of the Qatari Hell Road”, in which he narrated his story in Qatari prisons. That journalist was subjected to blackmail and threats to give up support for the Marongiu case.

In “The End of the Qatari Hell Road”, he narrated the facts of his imprisonment in Doha prisons since 2013 and the suffering that occurred as a result of the injustice of the Qatari regime. He said in his book, “I am a French prisoner in Qatar, and I suffer ill-treatment and torture after I was wrongly accused by the Qatari regime. They put me with killers and drug addicts in a mass of mold; I have no place to sleep. ISIS is here with me in the same cell.”

He revealed the treatment inside Qatari prisons, where he confirmed that ISIS terrorists languishing in Doha prisons enjoy special treatment and power that made their arrest tantamount to a masquerade to deceive Western media, pointing out that following the break in diplomatic relations between Qatar and its neighbors (Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Bahrain) in June 2017, Doha has imprisoned 25 Qataris accused of conscription to participate in the fighting in Syria with late ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and among them were the sons of some of the ministers.

Qatar’s Guantanamo

The Qatari regime takes pleasure in suppressing its opponents, as Qatari dissident Fahd Buhendi entered the Hamour political prison in Qatar more than three years ago, which is known as Qatar’s Guantanamo due to the severe torture practiced by the authorities against those who oppose the Qatari regime. He was subjected to severe violations, as he was deprived of his most basic rights in prison, various types of torture were practiced against him, and he was placed in solitary confinement.

Buhendi was killed in a Qatari prison on April 18, which ignited a revolution against the Qatari regime through social media after the abuse that occurred to this victim inside Doha’s prisons after his arrest by Tamim’s state security apparatus. He was placed in the Hamour prison, where all the prisoners are those who express freedom of opinion, poets, writers and politicians who oppose Tamim.

Immediately, Buhendi’s name trended on Twitter after publishing news about his murder in Qatari prisons after his arrest for more than three years because of his opposition to the Qatari regime. Some activists said on Twitter that the real reason for Buhendi’s death was torture, and his family was prevented from praying for him. He was buried in an unknown place, and no channels tracking the Qatari regime revealed any information about him.

Denouncing Human Rights Watch’s failure to reject the incident, while commenting and condemning similar incidents, activists said on Twitter, “Where’s Human Rights Watch? You will not comment on the killing of the Qatari man, but it is interfering in the affairs of other Arabs.”

Hamour prison has a bloody history, where the regime suppresses the opposition that refused to support the rule of former Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani after his coup against his father and his seizure of power in 1995. The prison administrators sought the help of a foreign militia to torture detainees, as it is heavily guarded, so as not to expose the practices of the militias affiliated with the Qatari regime inside the prison.