Qatar is once again in the news, after a Qatar Airways manager has been jailed in the small Gulf state for the past few weeks. This reportedly came after some sort of a police sting operation, so let’s go over the details of what we know.
Gay Qatar Airways manager reportedly jailed in Doha for weeks
44-year-old dual British and Mexican national Manuel Guerrero Aviña has reportedly been jailed in Doha since February 4, 2024, and this has been confirmed by the relevant consulates. His family is just now going public about this arrest, in hopes that international attention to this case will lead to action being taken for him to be released.
Manuel moves to Doha all the way back in 2017, so he has lived there for over seven years. He started his career at the oneworld airline as a Manager of Product Development, and in June 2023 was promoted to Acting Head of Product Development and Service Design.
He had extensive aviation experience prior to that, having worked at British Airways, Lufthansa, and Star Alliance. He really worked his way up, as he started his career as a flight attendant at British Airways.
So, how did this manager suddenly get arrested? According to Manuel’s brother, he was baited by police in Doha through gay dating and hookup app Grindr:
“Qatar police used a false Grindr profile to contact Manuel and invite him to participate in a meeting with other people from the LGBT community in the city of Doha. Manuel was supposed to meet a person he thought he had arranged an appointment with on the night of February 4 but instead encountered police officers who were waiting to arrest him arbitrarily.”
According to his brother, police planted drugs on Manuel, so he’s being held on drug possession charges:
“During the arrest police planted a quarter of a gram of methamphetamines on him to incriminate him for the crime of drug possession and as of today he remains unjustly imprisoned.”
He also claims that while in custody, police have tried to get him to reveal contact details of other members of the LGBT community:
“From the moment of his arrest, he has been the victim of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment as well of act of psychological torture. Authorities tried to force him to identify in his telephone contacts other members of the LGBT community as well as forcing him to witness the suffering of other detainees while they were whipped. He has been threatened, isolated, deprived of food and sufficient water because of his sexual orientation and health condition.”
Perhaps worst of all, Manuel is HIV positive, but has been denied access to the medication that he needs to manage that:
“He has been denied the right to a lawyer and has been forced to sign documents in Arabic without a translator to assist him. Even worse, he has been been prevented access to antiretroviral medicines he needs to be able to live with HIV, which constitutes an act of torture and puts his life at risk.”
This is an awful situation…
Make no mistake about it, this is a terrible situation, especially as Manuel is reportedly unable to get the medication that he needs to manage his HIV. Intentionally denying someone lifesaving medicine is cruel and and inhumane.
This is a good reminder that while visiting or even working in Gulf states like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates works well for a vast majority of people, there are exceptions. When things go wrong, you have very few rights, and that’s really tough — this is the prime example of that. Things are great, until they aren’t.
While Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are generally considered to be among the more progressive countries in the region, it sure seems like Qatar has been in the news a bit lately for things along these lines, while that’s not a story you often hear out of the United Arab Emirates.
What seems especially heinous here is that he was reportedly baited via Grindr, and then the police planted drugs on him, so that they could arrest him based on that. If that’s how this played out, that’s just next level monstrous.
One other thing worth pointing out is that Qatar generally won’t issue work permits to HIV positive people (which is ridiculous, but that’s a whole different story). So presumably he contracted HIV after moving to the country, since he would have had to undergo a medical exam back in 2017. Presumably he has gotten his medication from outside the country, which isn’t too hard to do when you have flight benefits and work for a global airline. Is the country now trying to “punish” him for that, or what? Ugh…
Qatar is trying to elevate its global profile, and increase its number of visitors. It sees what’s happening in Dubai, and wants in on the action. Qatar, if that’s the goal, these kinds of stories don’t help with that. You want to stay out of the news for things like this, because it certainly doesn’t help with making people more interested in visiting. Yet all too often, Qatar can’t help itself, like when Australian passengers were strip searched back in 2020…
Bottom line
A Qatar Airways manager has reportedly been jailed in Doha for the past several weeks. He’s HIV positive, and has been denied access to the medicine that he needs to be able to stay healthy. According to the man’s brother, he was baited by police through Grindr, and when he met up with them, they planted drugs on him, and arrested him based on that.
If the details here are as presented, then this is absolutely heinous.
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