A senior BBC journalist was arrested and thrown in jail in Qatar for trying to film the conditions of migrant workers who are building the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup.
Mark Lobel, the BBC’s Middle East business correspondent, his translator, driver and cameraman were invited to Qatar by the prime minister’s office to see the new flagship accommodation for low-paid migrant workers.
But they were all detained and subjected to ‘hostile’ questioning as they attempted to gain ‘additional material’ for their report.
This isn’t the first time this has happened.
Amazingly the Qatari’s tried to defend the arrest, pining the blame on the reporter himself.
https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/600257744575275010
So, basically their attitude seems to be, if you don’t go where we tell you to go we’ll arrest you and throw you in jail.
Here we go. Qatar's government issues a statement attacking us (no word on whereabouts of our equipment). Our response to that v soon online
— Mark Lobel (@marklobel) May 18, 2015
The BBC to their credit were having none of the Qatari response and issued the following statement.
“We are pleased that the BBC team has been released but we deplore the fact that they were detained in the first place. Their presence in Qatar was no secret and they were engaged in a perfectly proper piece of journalism. The Qatari authorities have made a series of conflicting allegations to justify the detention, all of which the team rejects. We are pressing the Qatari authorities for a full explanation and for the return of the confiscated equipment.”
This World Cup is going to be great.
