Dutch tourist who claimed she was raped in Qatar sentenced for extramarital sex

A TOURIST who claimed she was raped after her drink was spiked at an up-market bar has been taken to court and convicted.

The Dutch woman (not pictured) had been held in Qatar for three months after reporting she was raped. Picture: Kamran Jebreili/AP

A DUTCH tourist who claimed she was raped after her drink was spiked at a high-end hotel bar in Qatar has been convicted for having sex outside of marriage.

The 22-year-old woman has been held in Gulf country for nearly three months since she reported the attack and was arrested.

On Monday, a Qatari court handed the woman a one-year suspended sentence for having extramarital sex.

She was also fined the equivalent of $1145 and permitted to return to the Netherlands.

The woman said she someone had “messed with her drink” at a party at the Crystal Lounge nightclub at the up-market W Doha Hotel in Qatar’s capital, Doha, in March.

She said her memory was hazy but she realised she had been sexually assaulted after she woke up in a strange apartment with torn clothes, her lawyer told Dutch media.

The woman, who was on holiday at the time of the incident, was arrested after she reported the rape to police.

Sex outside of marriage is banned in the conservative Muslim country.

The woman’s accused rapist, identified as Syrian man Omar Abdullah al-Hasan, was also convicted of having sex outside of marriage.

He will receive 100 lashes for illicit sex acts and another 40 lashes as punishment for public drunkenness, and will also be deported, Al Jazeera reported. He denies the charges.

Sex outside of marriage is banned in the small Gulf state of Qatar.

Neither Hasan nor the Dutch woman were present when the judge handed down their convictions.

A court official who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity described the woman’s one-year suspended sentence as “lenient”.

“Had she been a Muslim woman, she would have received at least five years in jail,” he said.

“No one can get out of such charges here in Qatar.”

The victim’s mother told Dutch media her daughter was going through a “nightmare” ordeal.

“I’m shaking in my legs. I can’t believe it,” the woman’s mother, Marian, told Dutch news program EenVandaag after finding out she would be deported.

“She has been sentenced. I don’t know for what but I don’t care. This is the best I could have wished for.”

The Associated Press reports the Dutch woman’s case has raised new questions ahead of Doha hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which is likely will draw tens of thousands of Western tourists unfamiliar with the nation’s strict Islamic-based laws.

This is not the first time a Western tourist has been arrested, tried and convicted after claiming they had been raped in the Arab Gulf states.

In 2008, an Australian woman said she was jailed for eight months after reporting that she was gang-raped at a hotel in the United Arab Emirates.

In 2013, a Norwegian woman who reported being raped in Dubai received a 16-month sentence for having sex outside of marriage, though she was pardoned and allowed to leave the country.