QATARSUCKS and the world needs to know!

A 43-year-old Qatari national who pleaded guilty this year to being an al Qaeda sleeper agent, Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, was sentenced on Thursday to eight years, nearly half of the time the Justice Department had asked the court for him to serve in prison.

Qatar's National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) on Sunday condemned the widespread abuse of workers' rights in the Gulf state, highlighting harsh working conditions and a lack of adequate healthcare.

The NHRC said in its annual report the Committee received 1,031 complaints of human rights abuses in 2008, with 263 of them related to sponsorship transfer, 51 related to “deportation verdict cancellations” and 56 related to employer-employee disputes, Qatari daily Gulf Times reported on Monday.

A study conducted jointly by the Supreme Council for Family Affairs and Qatar University revealed that 160 women were exposed to abuse or sexual harassment during their childhood, prompting calls for stringent measures for protecting women.

The study was conducted on 2,787 girls from the Faculty of Literature and Science in Qatar University. Of those studied, 2,365 were nationals.

Media here have a clear role to play in highlighting issues like the latent racism which apparently exists in Qatar. In doing so, media can highlight such issues to the public and bring them to the attention of the higher authorities here.

The Ministry of Labor has suspended or warned more than 850 companies this year for violating various labor laws and stopped dealing with them till they comply with all sections of the laws.

Labor ministry inspectors conducted raids, over the last eight months, to identify firm that violated the law.

Inspectors were deployed to company premises, works sites and accommodations to check whether health and safety requirements were fulfilled as per Qatar's labor law.

Transactions with companies have been suspended for different period of time in accordance to the type of violation.

A number of small businesses have been accused of exploiting their workers by denying them simple benefits laid down in Qatar’s labor law.

According to some employees – many of whom put in long hours in grocery stores, restaurants, cafeterias, juice stalls and convenience shops – their bosses are routinely flouting the rules because they know they can get away with it.

A group of construction workers have been sleeping in the open for the past eight months – because it is better than living in the “hell” of labor camp accommodation.

Five men, four from North Africa and a south Asian, were seen bedding down for the night next to an under-construction 7-storey residential building at 11pm in the heart of Doha on Wednesday.
“It is an irony that we build these ‘residential apartments’ and don’t have a roof to sleep under,” said one visibly exhausted worker.

A QATARI man is charged with impersonating a policeman in order to steal QR3,840 from Bangladeshi laborers.
According to the expatriate workers, the 44-year-old man carried out the crime one afternoon in late January.

They told investigators the accused had twice entered the workers’ camp claiming to be a policeman. On the first occasion he left without incident, but on the second visit he walked into an open room and found a computer.

A 20-year-old Qatari has denied causing death by reckless driving – telling a court he was travelling at “only” 140kph.
The presiding judge, Salah al-Sharif, reminded him that the maximum speed on the country’s roads was 120kph and that the accident took place in an 80kph zone.

Furthermore, should he be found guilty of the offence, he will have to pay blood money out of his own pocket because his car was not insured at the time. The driver also told the court his brakes had not been working.

SKY-HIGH rents and lack of living space are turning Doha’s old town into a slum with makeshift rooms stacked on top of residential buildings. One area visited by Gulf Times in Doha ‘Jadeed’ found a number of low-income workers sleeping in shelters made up of old mattresses, scrap metal and tin roofs.

“Welcome to the ghetto of Doha,” greeted Ahmadzai, who was dripping with sweat while sitting in the courtyard of a building at 3.30pm.

Doha/Prague - Qatari Prince Hamid bin Abdal Sani, whom a Czech court found guilty of sex with underage girls in 2005 and who was afterwards extradited to Qatar, will not face trial in his homeland, as the Qatari prosecutor general has halted his prosecution, Czech station Radio Cesko reported today.

After his Czech sentence in mid-2005, Sani appealed the verdict, which therefore did not take effect. On the decision of the then Czech justice minister, Pavel Nemec, he was extradited to Qatar for further prosecution.

US EMBASSY officials are urging a liberalisation of the sponsorship law to combat forced labor and human trafficking violations within Qatar. The call comes amid increasing speculation regarding a draft law, currently awaiting approval, governing the entry and exit of foreigners, their residence and sponsorship.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a controversial Muslim cleric who defends suicide attacks, has been refused a visa to enter to the UK after a campaign by David Cameron.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said that it deplored the decision and accused the government of caving in to “unreasonable demands spearheaded by the Tory leader”.

Muhammad Abdul Bari, the secretary-general of the MCB, said that Dr al-Qaradawi enjoyed respect as a scholar throughout the Muslim world.

A STUDY has proven that there is violence against women within the family in Qatar. The survey, conducted by Kaltham al-Ghanem of the Social Department at Qatar University, sampled 2,778 QU female students, comprising 84% of Qataris and 16% of other nationalities, aged between 17 and 25 years.

The survey is the first scientific study on violence in Qatar, the result of which will be used to advocate and explore the necessity of enacting legislation on violence against women in the country, sources said.