Saudi ex-diplomat flees Qatar amid deportation fears: Amnesty

The London-based human rights organization said in a recent report that Amnesty International and Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) pressured Qatari officials to halt the deportation of Mishal bin Zaar Hamad al-Mutiry. 
 
According to the report, the two human rights bodies paid the al-Mutiry family’s travel expenses to Morocco. The ex-diplomat and his family left Qatar on January 18. 
 
Before traveling to Morocco, al-Mutiry had lived in Qatar since August 2011, when he escaped Saudi Arabia. 
 
In 2006, the former diplomat said he was arrested and tortured for six months after being tracked down and brought back by the Saudi regime officials from Brussels to Riyadh. 
 
At the time, al-Mutiry had been living in the Netherlands, where he was granted political asylum in 2004. 
 
The ex-diplomat had been dismissed from his job at Saudi Arabia’s embassy in The Hague after accusing his native country’s embassy of funding terrorism. 
 
Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Program Director at Amnesty International, said, “The spotlight shone on this case resulted in the Qatari authorities curtailing their plans to deport Mishal al-Mutiry long enough for him and his family to leave of their own accord, and the assistance of the NHRC was crucial to ensuring they could travel.” 
 
“Given that Mishal al-Mutiry faced a real risk of torture in Saudi Arabia, it is a huge relief that the authorities did not end up forcing him to return there,” Luther added.
 
“We will continue to monitor his situation and react if the risk of being deported to Saudi Arabia arises again,” he said.