Sheikh Hamad Bin-Jassim Bin-Jabar Al Thani, a former Prime Minister of Qatar, was accused of seizing land owned by Fawaz al-Attiya and arranging for him to be jailed for 15 months between 2009 and 2011.
Mr Attiya, who has been Ambassador at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Qatar since 1998, claims that he was forcibly taken by the sheikh’s agents, detained and banned from speaking to his family, on the pretext that he had leaked state secrets, the UK High Court heard.
He claims that Sheikh Hamad ordered the detention while he was Prime Minister so that the land could become part of Education City, a 14 sq km area on the outskirts of Qatar’s capital, Doha, which houses educational facilities and research centres.
However, the 56-year-old sheikh, who is now a counsellor at the Qatari Embassy in London and is believed to be worth nearly £8 billion, argued that the High Court had no jurisdiction to hear a claim of unlawful imprisonment brought against him by another diplomat.
He claimed that he was covered by diplomatic immunity and state immunity and that the English courts therefore had no power to hear the case.
Mr Justice Blake ruled in favour of the sheikh, calling his submissions ‘well founded’. The sheikh and the state of Qatar have always denied any wrongdoing.
Sheikh Hamed hit the headlines in Jersey
in 2002 and 2003 during a bribery investigation in which the JEP fought a successful legal
battle for open justice in court cases.
At the time, it was alleged that the sheikh, then Qatar’s Foreign Minister, siphoned
millions of pounds in ‘sweeteners’ and bribes paid by arms companies through two Jersey trusts. The Island’s investigation into the trusts was dropped in 2002 amid frustration about the lack of help that the Attorney General had received from other jurisdictions.
Sheikh Hamed agreed to pay Jersey £6 million as ‘reparation for damage perceived’, but always denied any wrongdoing.
The allegations were contained in court papers released following a lengthy battle by the JEP. In making its judgment, the Royal Court ruled that court cases should be held in public except when there are compelling reasons not to because the administration of justice would be adversely affected.
