Doha: Five Australian women have sued Qatar Airways in the Australian High Court after they were forced to undergo invasive body examinations at Doha airport in 2020.
According to the lawsuit, women are seeking compensation from both Qatar Airways and the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority, which are owned by the Qatari government, for “unlawful physical contact” and the effects on mental health, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, Guardian reported.
On October 2, 2020, more than a dozen women disembarked from a plane at Hamad International Airport for examinations after a baby was found in a rubbish bin.
Some were instructed to remove their underwear and forced to undergo invasive body examinations to see if they had recently given birth.
The female passengers were removed from the planes at gunpoint and taken to ambulances parked on the tarmac.
As per media reports, the women who were examined said that officials gave no information as to why they were forcibly screened, nor they had the opportunity to provide their informed consent.
According to BBC Persian, women described their experience as a “personal assault on the part of a state”, and the incident sparked widespread outrage.
One of them, a 33-year-old nurse, said in an interview with the New York Times, that she had not traveled since. “It completely changed me as a person, that day,” she said.
“It seems like they’ve just moved on, they’re not sorry for it,” she added. “They’re going on with their lives normally while we’re all here, quite affected. It’s really unfair.”
At that time, the Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, expressed his “sympathy with the women who were searched at the airport, and renewed Qatar’s apology to them.”
“The incident is a violation of Qatar’s laws and values,” he said in a statement.
