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14 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 30 NOVEMBER 2022 WORLD CUP 2022 another way in which foreign nationals are disadvantaged in the death penalty system – this relates to the Islamic practice of diyya or "blood money". Under sharia law there are three cat- egories of crime, qesas, hudud and ta'azir. The first category, qesas, cov- ers crimes such as homicide and infliction of injury, and under sharia law there are options for restitution and forgiveness, in- cluding "blood money" where- by the accused pays financial compensation to the victim's family as an alternative to retri- bution through execution. But, Chaudhary was unable to bene- fit from this practice, as his vic- tim's family refused to accept compensation. It is thought that migrant workers are much less likely to benefit from blood money as they are unlikely to be able to afford the payment. Reluctant embassies Our research suggests that, even when notified, some em- bassies may not be forthcom- ing in assisting their nationals who are facing criminal charg- es. Our partners tell us that embassies may be reluctant to assist or devote funds to sup- porting those people because, as Pramod Acharya, an inves- tigative journalist from Nepal, explained to us, they "don't want to give the impression that they are protecting crimi- nals". In Anil's case, the embassy in Doha asked for 30,000 Riyals from the Nepali government to pay a lawyer to defend him at the Supreme Court. However, this request was bounced back and forth between the Min- istry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Labour who then sent it to the Foreign Employ- ment Board, wasting precious time. As Neha Choudhary at the International Labour Or- ganisation (ILO) in Nepal told us, there is also a "disjunct" be- tween the various government institutions in Nepal respon- sible for labourers working abroad. She said: If there was enhanced coordi- nation between various minis- tries, particularly the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as all three tiers of government, a lot of the gaps in ensuring rights of migrant workers could be ad- dressed. The Nepali Foreign Employ- ment Board manages a fund of 6 billion rupees (£38 million), to be used for the assistance of migrant workers where re- quired. This fund is financed by the migrant workers them- selves, who are required to contribute as a condition of their foreign employment per- mit from Nepal. Guidelines, which came out in 2021, provide that the Board can spend 1.5 million rupees (around £9,500) to hire a lawyer for a worker detained abroad. However, one of our sources reported to us that the Foreign Employment Board had told them they had helped fewer than four such prisoners in this way in three years. Other NGOs told us that the embassies argue they are un- derstaffed and underfunded as well as poorly coordinated. Deepika Thapaliya, of Equidem, explained that the effectiveness of diplomatic interventions on behalf of the foreign national depended on the "bargaining power" of the foreign govern- ment, which many South Asian states do not have in the Gulf because they are so reliant on remittances (payments sent home by migrant workers to support their families in their home states). Nepal, for ex- ample, derives a quarter of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from remittances. Similarly, Human Rights Watch and Justice Project Pa- kistan found that Pakistani mi- grant workers in Saudi Arabia did not seek consular assis- tance when faced with crimi- nal charges, "because they did not believe Pakistani officials would offer any assistance, and they did not want to waste limited money on such phone calls". It is thought that this is be- cause of foreign states' interest in maintaining their economic relationships with Gulf coun- tries and that "the remittanc- es sent home by hundreds of thousands of such workers every month may be more im- portant for the country than the protection of an individual citizen at risk of burdening the relations with the host coun- try". Considerable research has es- tablished that foreign nation- als are especially vulnerable when facing the death penal- ty abroad. They face practical barriers such as their inability to speak the language of their interrogators and jailors, being far from their social and eco- nomic support networks, and being unaware of their rights in an alien criminal justice sys- tem. Under Qatari law, for exam- ple, only Qatari lawyers can represent defendants, and thus foreign defendants are not able to hire a lawyer from their own country, who would know their language and be better acquainted with their situa- tion. In Chaudhary's case, the Nepali Embassy in Doha found this rule to be a major barrier to ensuring he was well-rep- resented, as it was difficult to find a Qatari lawyer who was ready to defend a foreigner accused of killing a Qatari na- tional. After repeated requests from the embassy, a lawyer was found, but only after his sen- tence had been pronounced, making it much more difficult for any conviction to be over- turned at appeal. The types of crimes for which the death penalty is retained as a punishment in the Middle East, as well as Asia, are also by their nature more likely to in- volve foreign nationals, such as cross-border drug trafficking or terrorism. The issue of the lack of consu- lar notification and the vulner- ability of foreign national de- fendants is apparent across the Gulf. One such tragic example includes the case of a Filipina migrant domestic worker who was executed in 2017, and whose embassy was only made aware of her execution the day before. Likewise, two Bahraini men were sentenced to death for terrorism in Saudi Arabia in 2021, and it is reported that they were subjected to torture and ill-treatment and not ap- pointed a lawyer until after their trial sessions had begun. Their lawyer did not have ac- cess to all the relevant docu- ments and information. Conversely, in another case involving a Filipina domes- tic worker who was sentenced to death in UAE in 2014 after killing her employer in self-de- fence against sexual assault, she received assistance from her embassy in lodging her appeal and they were instrumental in securing her acquittal in 2017. This example underscores the vital role that consulates can play in assisting their nationals facing a death sentence abroad – if given the opportunity. Migrant worker abuse and the death penalty There has been little death penalty research in the Gulf. But one death penalty expert, Daniel Pascoe, believes it has some of the "most secretive" and "prolific" death penalty ju- risdictions in the world. In these "closed" Gulf states – where it is nearly impossible to obtain official information on the operation of the death penalty – we have had to utilise creative methods, relying upon a number of different sources for a triangulation of evidence. We gathered material from partner organisations, includ- ing Eleos Justice, Harm Re- duction International (HRI), Project 39A, Justice Project Pa- kistan, The Death Penalty Pro- ject, Reprieve, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) and the An- ti-Death Penalty Asia Network, as well as others working on the ground including lawyers, journalists and activists. We also analysed the "grey" liter- ature including NGO reports and media articles. Those cas- es we identified were collated, cross-referenced to omit du- plications, anonymised where necessary and recorded on our database. Qatar's death row Qatar retains the death pen- alty by firing squad or hanging for crimes including murder, terrorism, rape, drug traffick- ing, treason and espionage. Those under sentence of death are held at Central Prison, in Doha. Though executions are ra- re, those under sentence of death suffer greatly because of "death row phenomenon" – recognised in internation- al case law as the psycholog- ical impact of languishing on death row, which amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. And indeed, our partners, such as Acharya, tell us that those on death row in Qatar live in cramped and cold conditions, with "bed bugs and blood stained walls", and they are rarely able to contact their families. The number of death sen- tences passed in Qatar is slowly CONTIMNUED FORIM PAGE 13

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