DOHA, 25 June 2005 — Most people among a group of some 5,000 who were stripped of their Qatari citizenship a few months ago for holding dual nationality have corrected their status, Qatar’s foreign minister has said.
“Qatari law prohibits dual nationality,” Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabor Al-Thani, who is also Qatar’s first deputy prime minister, told Doha-based Al Jazeera satellite television in an interview aired Wednesday night.
Admitting that “some mistakes” had been made in handling the case at the beginning, the minister said they had now been “corrected and conditions of most of them adjusted.”
“Part of this group was ill-treated and the rest did not suffer any injustice,” he said. “Qatar’s Human Rights Committee had issued a statement a few days ago and it is being studied by the Cabinet which will refer it to the Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani.”
The Human Rights Committee said in its statement that it was in “constant touch” with the authorities to take up the cases of people whose citizenship has been revoked. The committee called on those affected by the government decision to contact it.
The minister said in the interview that the “issue” had both political and economic aspects and “the issue took a certain magnitude for reasons unrelated to it.”
Sheikh Hamad said most of those who had been stripped of their citizenship remained in their homes in Qatar and continued to receive government services.
The government acted only after issuing two notices to the people holding two or more nationalities to correct their status, the minister said. “Some of them had carried two, three or four nationalities.”
The GCC security agreement, he said, was clear on this and “everyone has to keep just one nationality and that is being followed in Qatar.” He denied that members of the Al-Murrah tribe have been singled out. Other people holding dual or more nationalities had also been covered by the recent measures, he said.
“The Al-Murrah tribe is big in Qatar and they have their duties as Qataris ... but the issue is related to the people who have dual nationalities whether they are from Al-Murrah or not,” the Qatar News Agency quoted the minister as saying in the interview.
“What happened won’t affect the Al-Murrah tribe which is respectable in Qatar,” he said. “Some ministers belong to the Al-Murrah tribe and have served (the government) since and before the formation of the state of Qatar.”
He denied that revoking the citizenship was aimed at punishing members of the tribe because of their stance during the failed 1996 coup attempt. He said some people had been involved in the failed coup, mainly soldiers. They had not been tried in military courts; their cases were transferred to the civil court which studied them for years. “Some of them were imprisoned and the others released.”
Touching on elections to Qatar’s consultative Shoura council, the minister said they would be held by late 2006 or early 2007 after the completion of certain “logistical requirements”. He said Qatar might allow the formation of political parties in future. He noted that Qatar already had some sort of political groupings in the form of families and tribes.
