

The banker who can't get out of Qatar - jteo
http://www.ericellis.com/khaliji.htm

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dantheman
Hopefully more stories like this get out, and people will refuse to do
business in Qatar, without exceptional compensation for the perceived risk
involved. When they see they're losing money they'll have to decide whether
they want to stay in their old ways, or adapt and show respect for the fellow
human beings.

------
fiaz
From camel to Cadillac in a single generation....there is still a long ways to
go in terms of human rights in that part of the world.

~~~
forinti
And certain other parts of the world only think they got it:
<http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/802>

"More than 60 foreign citizens representing 22 nationalities are under
sentence of death in the United States of America (USA). In virtually every
case, the arresting authorities failed to notify detained foreigners of their
right to communicate with their consular representatives."

~~~
arohann
Are you comparing the Qatari legal/punitive system against the US system ? If
so, you're either being incredibly naive, incredibly stupid, or just trolling.
Anyone with half a brain would rather be arrested for a (percieved) crime in
the US rather than a country such as Qatar. Read the orginal article carefully
and see the kind of limbo that Proctor is in. One could argue that the link
you posted is not even on topic.

~~~
jayp
Bahrain may have similar legal foundations as Qatar, but those are definitely
two different countries. Someone standing up on a pedestal should probably
know that.

~~~
arohann
Noted and corrected. Funny I made that mistake since I've lived close by in
Dubai for a while and have relatives living and working in both Bahrain and
Qatar.

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pmorici
I don't understand why he can't just go to the British Embassy and have them
take him out of the country. Or is that not how it works?

~~~
pyre
I think that issue is that the government claims there are legal cases against
him, and the British government is wiping their hands of it claiming that they
can't interfere until the legal issues are tied up. Though I think it's
possible for him to stay at the embassy if he runs out of money and has no
place to stay.

These are diplomatic issues. I don't think that the British government really
has much leverage to apply pressure to Qatar. It's also possible that they
don't do much in the way of action/applying pressure unless it becomes a major
media event.

There was a media event a couple of years ago around a Canadian citizen that
was detained in Mexico because her boss was a crook. Apparently they couldn't
get/punish him so they grabbed her and claimed that she was implicit in the
crime because her salary (~$30K IIRC) came out of the money that he cheated
people out of (she was his secretary, IIRC).

The Canadian government was able to convince the Mexicans to allow her to
serve her sentence in a Canadian prison. When she was in Canada I believe they
waived her sentence, gave her community service instead, or something similar.
This brought a lot of other people with similar issues to the forefront. Some
of which had been trying to get the Canadian government to intervene for
years, but they didn't get enough media coverage to warrant decisive action. I
think that the number the CBC trotted out was ~120 similar cases of Canadian
citizens detained in foreign countries for dubious crimes (or no claims of
crime whatsoever).

I think that, in general, governments don't want to play the diplomacy game
for these 'small gains' if they don't have to since diplomacy can be give-take
in many cases. They are only forced to act to avoid losing face with the
general public when a specific case becomes a media-storm.

[UPDATE] I guess I should mention that in the case of the woman in Mexico, her
ex-boss even came forward to say that she had no knowledge of his crimes (for
whatever that's worth, seeing-as the guy was a conman for all intents and
purposes). Also, I can't remember of the money was her salary or a 'bonus'
that he paid to her, but I'm pretty sure the amount of around $27K and she
wasn't a rich woman, so I think it was her salary.

