ABCNEWS:AND WHAHTDAHEY!?!?!?: ABCNEWS: Qatari Diplomat Was Going to See Qaeda Inmate
No Charges for Qatar Diplomat in Plane Scare
Al-Madadi was flying first class to Denver for a consular visit with jailed al Qaeda member Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri who is imprisoned at the Colorado "supermax" penitentiary. Al-Marri was arrested in Illinois shortly after the 9/11 attacks and is believed to have been an al Qaeda sleeper agent.WAS THIS CREEP READ HS RIGHTS? WAS HE INTEROGATED BY THE CIA? OR WAS HE TREATED WITH KID GLOVES?
I DOUBT HE WAS TREATED HARSHLY ENOUGH.
HE WAS RELEASED TOO QUICKLY.
I THINK OBAMA TREATED BIBI WORSE THAN THEY TREATED THIS GUY.
HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN WATER-BOARDED.
3 comments:
Qatar terrorist al Marri was sentenced to 8 years in the US and my brother got a life sentence in Qatar for writing a letter?
My brother, John Downs, is an American Geologist serving a life sentence in Qatar for alleged espionage. Margaret Downs and I spent spring break handing out information in front of the Qatar embassy in DC and are going back in a couple of weeks to continue our stakeout indefinitely since the Qatari embassy officials were so visibly disturbed by our presence. The Arkansas Gazette featured a front page story on us and the Northwest Arkansas paper wrote about us in the opinion page (see link) John will reach his 5th year of imprisonment this August, 7000 miles from his family, the only American in the prison.
Our goal is to initiate interest between the two countries in a Prisoner Transfer Treaty in order to return John to the US to serve his sentence.
Please visit our website johnwdowns.com
Thank you,
Julie Van Woy
HMMM...
MAYBE HE ONLY DESERVES 10-20 YEARS: HE OFFERED TO SELL PRIVATE/SECRET INFO TO IRAN:
Qatar is a small peninsula country in the Persian Gulf bordered by Saudi Arabia. Across the Gulf is Iran.
Qatar is an Islamic country run by a ruling family named Al Thani, its Amir being Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. This was a poor country until large reserves of gas and oil were discovered in 1939, catapulting the royal family and the country's citizens into unprecedented wealth. The country has poor farmland and little other resources for income.
Downs grew up in northwest Arkansas and graduated from the University of Arkansas with a doctorate in physics and a master's in geology. He worked for 15 years for Atlantic Richfield before taking a job with Qatar Petroleum as a senior geophysics engineer, where he worked for 10 years before he was imprisoned.
While in Qatar, he and his wife raised their three children, Nicholas, Margaret and Thomas.
Downs says, in his introduction on his Web site, johnwdowns.com, that working conditions were "poor, the management was awful and the pay was uncompetitive, but I stayed with it because my family enjoyed Qatar so much, my kids were thriving here."
In May 2005, when Downs had already accepted another, better position in Saudi Arabia, his frustrations with his Qatari employers reached a peak where he wrote a letter to the Iranian embassy in Qatar's capital city of Doha and offered to sell what he calls "obsolete technical data from Qatar gas wells, back of the file cabinet sort of stuff from wells drilled twenty or thirty years ago."
He admits his action was "foolish" and "wrong."
"I had no right to make this proposal, it was not authorized by management of course."
What happened next was the stuff of modern espionage adventure movies. The Iranian embassy turned his e-mail over to the Qatari government, who set him up in a sting operation.
He met a contact in the desert on the promise of receiving $1,000, and although he says he brought no information with him, he was arrested, his car and home were searched and his computer was confiscated.
Downs was tried in a secret trial in Arabic with a poor translator, a Qatari-chosen lawyer, and no documents allowed to be admitted to evidence. Coworkers, fearing for their jobs and their safety, would not testify on his behalf, although a coworker did write a letter later in support of Downs. Neither the American embassy nor Downs' family were allowed to attend.
The fact that Iran refused to enter a deal with Downs; that he had no information on him when he met his contact in the desert; that the information he would have given them, he said, was of no practical use; and that his action of bringing his laptop home with him to work at home was standard practice of all the engineers fell on deaf ears in Qatar.
He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Two appeals have failed, the U.S. State Department has said they can be of no help, and the family now has no recourse but to try to bring media attention to the situation.
GOOD LUCK!
Thanks for the link in! :)
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