News: honor killing, hijacking

[qatarperegrine]

• The Qatari appeals court has just commuted the sentence of a Jordanian teenager who killed his sister in an apparent honor killing. Instead of three years in jail, he now gets a one-year suspended sentence. To my knowledge, Qatar does not officially soften penalties in the case of honor killings, but in practice it seems they are pretty sympathetic to the perpetrator.


• The trial has begun for the apparent attempted hijacking of a Qatar Airways plane last year. I had not previously heard the accused was a former camel jockey, nor that he was at the time applying for asylum in Israel. I hope we hear more in the paper about his asylum request. Since Qatar finally outlawed child jockeys and replaced them with robots shortly after we moved here, I hadn't given much thought to what happened to former jockeys.


• In lighter news: I'm all for imams fighting for the betterment of those in poverty, but must they look so terrifying?

Comments

[rmitz.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we should take a moment to consider that the original "harsh" sentence was three years in jail for the MURDER of his SISTER. Or manslaughter, if you want to split hairs. And admitted assaults. I could cry.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

And meanwhile two hashish smugglers got the death penalty.

[y-pestis.livejournal.com]

And this line in the article:

"The upper court’s decision means that if the convict repeated the offence within the next three years, the judgement will be carried out."

Does he even have another sister to murder? Do we want to find out?

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Wow. Somehow I didn't notice that sentence.