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Diplomatic immunity of Qatar's former billionaire PM questioned in high court
Lawyers for man claiming he was kidnapped and tortured say Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani’s position as a diplomat in London is a sham
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani leaves 10 Downing Street in London in 2008. Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images
Randeep Ramesh
Wednesday 13 January 2016 20.04 GMTLast modified on Wednesday 13 January 2016 20.22 GMT
The former prime minister of Qatar, one of the world’s wealthiest men, could be drawn into a series of high-profile investigations into the awarding of the 2022 World Cup and the controversial billion-pound bailout of Barclays bank if he were stripped of his diplomatic immunity, a court has heard.
Lawyers for Fawaz al-Attiya, a British citizen and former official spokesman of the emirate, claimed that Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, had taken up a position as a diplomat in London after leaving office to shield himself from claims that he was responsible for their client’s kidnap and torture.
Attiya claims that Qatari agents acting on behalf of Thani, who is commonly known as HBJ, ordered his false imprisonment in Doha for 15 months beginning in 2009 and subjected him to conditions amounting to torture.
The claims are rejected by HBJ, whose lawyers say the “extremely serious allegations are, without exception, a combination of distortion, exaggeration and wholesale fabrication”.
At the high court, Thomas de la Mare QC, acting for Attiya, said that HBJ had invested billions in Barclays bank, a transaction for which the bank was now being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, and that he was “intimately involved” in Qatar’s successful bid for the football World Cup in 2022.
“The [Barclays] investments were subject to a high profile SFO investigation against Barclays bank which one would anticipate the defendant [HBJ] would be a highly significant witness if called,” said de la Mare. “Immunity was operating in a context … arising with Barclays and indeed the World Cup.”
HBJ, who has a personal fortune of £8bn, stood down as Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister in June 2013. He has appeared on the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) diplomatic list as a “minister-counsellor” serving in the London embassy and has remained on the diplomatic list.
Monica Carss-Frisk QC, who is acting for HBJ, said the FCO had confirmed that his appointment – which focused on economic relations – began on 6 November 2013. As a minister-counsellor, he would have legal immunity under the Vienna convention of 1961.
In court, de la Mare claimed that HBJ had in fact never taken up his position in the embassy. The lawyer described the appointment as a sham. “[HBJ] had never been to the Foreign Office, never gone to the London embassy or attended the ambassador’s reception and ate the Ferrero Rocher chocolates on offer.”
Instead, he argued, that HBJ spent his time pursuing personal business deals – breaching the terms of the Vienna convention which forbids engaging in commercial activity for personal profit. Court papers claim that HBJ held “beneficiary” ownership of key London hotels and had purchased an oil company in London for £1bn while a diplomat.
“There is no doubt that he was engaged in substantial commercial activity in the UK and when not here he was engaged in it elsewhere. He bought a stake in Deutsche Bank and bought Spanish department store El Corte Ingles,” said de la Mare.
He added that HBJ’s Instagram account showed he spent much of his time when not doing deals on holidays in exotic locations such as Marrakech, Mumbai and the Maldives. The judge, Justice Blake, drew laughs in court by asking whether Instagram was a “social media account”.
However, Carss-Frisk said such claims were irrelevant as Qatar had freely appointed the billionaire as a diplomat and that this had been confirmed by the FCO, which had been made aware of claims of business activity. “The Qatari ambassador and foreign minister and the foreign office all say he was appointed as a diplomat,” she said.
She added it was wrong to suggest HBJ could not claim diplomatic immunity under the Vienna convention and argued that the court should speak with one voice with the government “on such a matter of international relations”.
She told the judge that if the court decided to remove HBJ’s immunity there might be “many, many cases of spurious allegations by reference to Instagram over whether diplomats are exercising their diplomatic functions or not. It makes the whole thing unworkable”.
Blake said that the issue he had to consider was whether the Foreign Office officials had taken an “ultra vires” step in claiming HBJ had “enjoyed the privileges and immunities of a member of the diplomatic staff of a mission”.
The judge reserved judgement and will make a ruling at a later date.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ormer-billionaire-pm-questioned-in-high-court
The former Prime Minister of Qatar Hamad bin Jassim has been caught at the center of yet another scandal, but this time around the charges pressed against him imply something more serious than “mere” corruption. The British court has recently opened a case against him for alleged torture of a British citizen. This information was leaked by a number of British media sources, including the prominent London newspaper The Guardian. According to this newspaper, Hamad bin Jassim attempted to evade prosecution by using his diplomatic immunity in an attempt to save his damaged reputation – the loss of which may have grave consequences for his business affairs. The only problem is, as far as international law is concerned, Hamad bin Jassim, even if he is in possession of a diplomatic passport, cannot use diplomatic immunity. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations explicitly specifies that only members of a diplomatic mission may employ diplomatic immunity. As for the possession of a diplomatic passport, it seems to be nothing more that a form of courtesy that Qatari officials showed to Hamad bin Jassim. Now everything depends on the British government, but it seems that Hamad bin Jassim is likely to buy his way out of these charges.
As far as the charges are concerned, The Guardian article states that they were brought forward by Fawaz al-Attiya – “a UK national born in London, claims that Qatari agents acting on behalf of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani falsely imprisoned him in Doha for 15 months and subjected him to conditions amounting to torture. Attiya claims he was kept in solitary confinement, deprived of sleep and only let out in handcuffs to be interrogated.”
Back in 1997 Hamad bin Jassim pursued a deal that Fawaz al-Attiya was reluctant to sign due to the inadequately low price that the former Prime Minister wanted to pay for 20,000 square meters of land in west Doha. For this “offence” he was removed from the position of Qatar’s official spokesperson and detained, which allowed Hamad bin Jassim to steal the desired land.
Back in 1997 Hamad bin Jassim pursued a deal that Fawaz al-Attiya was reluctant to sign due to the inadequately low price that the former Prime Minister wanted to pay for 20,000 square meters of land in west Doha. For this “offence” he was removed from the position of Qatar’s official spokesperson and detained, which allowed Hamad bin Jassim to steal the desired land.
The Guardian stresses the fact that the estimated personal fortune of the former emir is 12 billion dollars. He was forced to step down within a month of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani‘s decision to hand over power to his son. Without his patron, Hamad bin Jassim had no means of saving his position and now enjoys nothing but hatred and contempt in the Arab world. This hatred is provoked by the fact that he legitimized the power Hamad, when the latter staged a coup against his father. Many states in the Persian Gulf and the West, including the United States, were reluctant to accept such a ruthless and insolent revolution in violation of all expected political and legal norms. This is especially so if one is to consider the fact that the former emir satisfied pretty much everyone.
As for Hamad bin Jassim’s background, he is a relative of the former emir of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, yet he had no hope of claiming the position of emir since he was born by a Pakistani concubine. Yet, he made a breathtakingly successful career within the Qatari government, even without a proper education, due to the fact that he was particularly proficient in dealing with laundering the money stolen from the Qatar Investment Authority which he headed. The Authority paid 4 billion dollars for the acquisition of the prominent London department store Harrod, while 15% of this sum was handed back to the Emir Hamad bin Jassim himself. And this is but a single example, since there was an acquisition of the Brazilian branch of Spanish Santander bank that costed the Authority another 4 billion dollars followed by some half-legal investments in the sinking Greek economy. This was the reason why the former Emir kept him for so long in the government without allowing any form of prosecution regarding his many misdeeds.
The former Prime Minister is operating in London now, which is inconvenient since Britain and the United States have accumulated enough evidence against him to ensure that he won’t be working against the interests of London and Washington. That is why he’s particularly fond of the French, Italian, and Spanish markets.
Aside from his corruption, Hamad bin Jassim is particularly famous for instigating a wave of “color” revolutions in the Arab world. He is largely responsible for thousands of innocent people killed and maimed in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and in the ongoing war in Syria. There’s little doubt that he is capable of torturing a British citizen, since he issued the order to the airport police in Doha in November 2011 to brutally assault the then Russian Ambassador to Qatar Vladimir Titorenko, while damaging his diplomatic pouch. This was nothing but an act of revenge since Titorenko publicly denounced the wave of “color” revolutions in the Arab media which provoked much hatred against the sitting prime minister. At that time Moscow reserved taking any actions, limiting itself to a reduction in diplomatic relations with Qatar, but then returned them to normal shortly after this outrageous incident, and sent a new ambassador to Qatar without receiving any form of apology.
Perhaps Hamad bin Jassim will now get a taste of British justice. The question remains – what this Qatari criminal is up to this time if London is willing to publish news regarding such a scandal? Apparently, the traces of his wrongdoing are to be found somewhere in the Middle East, where blood is still spilled on the daily basis.
New Eastern Outlook.
Lawyers for man claiming he was kidnapped and tortured say Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani’s position as a diplomat in London is a sham
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani leaves 10 Downing Street in London in 2008. Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images
Randeep Ramesh
Wednesday 13 January 2016 20.04 GMTLast modified on Wednesday 13 January 2016 20.22 GMT
The former prime minister of Qatar, one of the world’s wealthiest men, could be drawn into a series of high-profile investigations into the awarding of the 2022 World Cup and the controversial billion-pound bailout of Barclays bank if he were stripped of his diplomatic immunity, a court has heard.
Lawyers for Fawaz al-Attiya, a British citizen and former official spokesman of the emirate, claimed that Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, had taken up a position as a diplomat in London after leaving office to shield himself from claims that he was responsible for their client’s kidnap and torture.
Attiya claims that Qatari agents acting on behalf of Thani, who is commonly known as HBJ, ordered his false imprisonment in Doha for 15 months beginning in 2009 and subjected him to conditions amounting to torture.
The claims are rejected by HBJ, whose lawyers say the “extremely serious allegations are, without exception, a combination of distortion, exaggeration and wholesale fabrication”.
At the high court, Thomas de la Mare QC, acting for Attiya, said that HBJ had invested billions in Barclays bank, a transaction for which the bank was now being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, and that he was “intimately involved” in Qatar’s successful bid for the football World Cup in 2022.
“The [Barclays] investments were subject to a high profile SFO investigation against Barclays bank which one would anticipate the defendant [HBJ] would be a highly significant witness if called,” said de la Mare. “Immunity was operating in a context … arising with Barclays and indeed the World Cup.”
HBJ, who has a personal fortune of £8bn, stood down as Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister in June 2013. He has appeared on the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) diplomatic list as a “minister-counsellor” serving in the London embassy and has remained on the diplomatic list.
Monica Carss-Frisk QC, who is acting for HBJ, said the FCO had confirmed that his appointment – which focused on economic relations – began on 6 November 2013. As a minister-counsellor, he would have legal immunity under the Vienna convention of 1961.
In court, de la Mare claimed that HBJ had in fact never taken up his position in the embassy. The lawyer described the appointment as a sham. “[HBJ] had never been to the Foreign Office, never gone to the London embassy or attended the ambassador’s reception and ate the Ferrero Rocher chocolates on offer.”
Instead, he argued, that HBJ spent his time pursuing personal business deals – breaching the terms of the Vienna convention which forbids engaging in commercial activity for personal profit. Court papers claim that HBJ held “beneficiary” ownership of key London hotels and had purchased an oil company in London for £1bn while a diplomat.
“There is no doubt that he was engaged in substantial commercial activity in the UK and when not here he was engaged in it elsewhere. He bought a stake in Deutsche Bank and bought Spanish department store El Corte Ingles,” said de la Mare.
He added that HBJ’s Instagram account showed he spent much of his time when not doing deals on holidays in exotic locations such as Marrakech, Mumbai and the Maldives. The judge, Justice Blake, drew laughs in court by asking whether Instagram was a “social media account”.
However, Carss-Frisk said such claims were irrelevant as Qatar had freely appointed the billionaire as a diplomat and that this had been confirmed by the FCO, which had been made aware of claims of business activity. “The Qatari ambassador and foreign minister and the foreign office all say he was appointed as a diplomat,” she said.
She added it was wrong to suggest HBJ could not claim diplomatic immunity under the Vienna convention and argued that the court should speak with one voice with the government “on such a matter of international relations”.
She told the judge that if the court decided to remove HBJ’s immunity there might be “many, many cases of spurious allegations by reference to Instagram over whether diplomats are exercising their diplomatic functions or not. It makes the whole thing unworkable”.
Blake said that the issue he had to consider was whether the Foreign Office officials had taken an “ultra vires” step in claiming HBJ had “enjoyed the privileges and immunities of a member of the diplomatic staff of a mission”.
The judge reserved judgement and will make a ruling at a later date.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ormer-billionaire-pm-questioned-in-high-court
The former Prime Minister of Qatar Hamad bin Jassim has been caught at the center of yet another scandal, but this time around the charges pressed against him imply something more serious than “mere” corruption. The British court has recently opened a case against him for alleged torture of a British citizen. This information was leaked by a number of British media sources, including the prominent London newspaper The Guardian. According to this newspaper, Hamad bin Jassim attempted to evade prosecution by using his diplomatic immunity in an attempt to save his damaged reputation – the loss of which may have grave consequences for his business affairs. The only problem is, as far as international law is concerned, Hamad bin Jassim, even if he is in possession of a diplomatic passport, cannot use diplomatic immunity. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations explicitly specifies that only members of a diplomatic mission may employ diplomatic immunity. As for the possession of a diplomatic passport, it seems to be nothing more that a form of courtesy that Qatari officials showed to Hamad bin Jassim. Now everything depends on the British government, but it seems that Hamad bin Jassim is likely to buy his way out of these charges.
As far as the charges are concerned, The Guardian article states that they were brought forward by Fawaz al-Attiya – “a UK national born in London, claims that Qatari agents acting on behalf of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani falsely imprisoned him in Doha for 15 months and subjected him to conditions amounting to torture. Attiya claims he was kept in solitary confinement, deprived of sleep and only let out in handcuffs to be interrogated.”
Back in 1997 Hamad bin Jassim pursued a deal that Fawaz al-Attiya was reluctant to sign due to the inadequately low price that the former Prime Minister wanted to pay for 20,000 square meters of land in west Doha. For this “offence” he was removed from the position of Qatar’s official spokesperson and detained, which allowed Hamad bin Jassim to steal the desired land.
Back in 1997 Hamad bin Jassim pursued a deal that Fawaz al-Attiya was reluctant to sign due to the inadequately low price that the former Prime Minister wanted to pay for 20,000 square meters of land in west Doha. For this “offence” he was removed from the position of Qatar’s official spokesperson and detained, which allowed Hamad bin Jassim to steal the desired land.
The Guardian stresses the fact that the estimated personal fortune of the former emir is 12 billion dollars. He was forced to step down within a month of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani‘s decision to hand over power to his son. Without his patron, Hamad bin Jassim had no means of saving his position and now enjoys nothing but hatred and contempt in the Arab world. This hatred is provoked by the fact that he legitimized the power Hamad, when the latter staged a coup against his father. Many states in the Persian Gulf and the West, including the United States, were reluctant to accept such a ruthless and insolent revolution in violation of all expected political and legal norms. This is especially so if one is to consider the fact that the former emir satisfied pretty much everyone.
As for Hamad bin Jassim’s background, he is a relative of the former emir of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, yet he had no hope of claiming the position of emir since he was born by a Pakistani concubine. Yet, he made a breathtakingly successful career within the Qatari government, even without a proper education, due to the fact that he was particularly proficient in dealing with laundering the money stolen from the Qatar Investment Authority which he headed. The Authority paid 4 billion dollars for the acquisition of the prominent London department store Harrod, while 15% of this sum was handed back to the Emir Hamad bin Jassim himself. And this is but a single example, since there was an acquisition of the Brazilian branch of Spanish Santander bank that costed the Authority another 4 billion dollars followed by some half-legal investments in the sinking Greek economy. This was the reason why the former Emir kept him for so long in the government without allowing any form of prosecution regarding his many misdeeds.
The former Prime Minister is operating in London now, which is inconvenient since Britain and the United States have accumulated enough evidence against him to ensure that he won’t be working against the interests of London and Washington. That is why he’s particularly fond of the French, Italian, and Spanish markets.
Aside from his corruption, Hamad bin Jassim is particularly famous for instigating a wave of “color” revolutions in the Arab world. He is largely responsible for thousands of innocent people killed and maimed in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and in the ongoing war in Syria. There’s little doubt that he is capable of torturing a British citizen, since he issued the order to the airport police in Doha in November 2011 to brutally assault the then Russian Ambassador to Qatar Vladimir Titorenko, while damaging his diplomatic pouch. This was nothing but an act of revenge since Titorenko publicly denounced the wave of “color” revolutions in the Arab media which provoked much hatred against the sitting prime minister. At that time Moscow reserved taking any actions, limiting itself to a reduction in diplomatic relations with Qatar, but then returned them to normal shortly after this outrageous incident, and sent a new ambassador to Qatar without receiving any form of apology.
Perhaps Hamad bin Jassim will now get a taste of British justice. The question remains – what this Qatari criminal is up to this time if London is willing to publish news regarding such a scandal? Apparently, the traces of his wrongdoing are to be found somewhere in the Middle East, where blood is still spilled on the daily basis.
New Eastern Outlook.
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