Five Australian women win right to sue Qatar Airways over invasive searches

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - SYDNEY — Five Australian women who were strip-searched and invasively examined at Doha airport have won the right to sue Qatar Airways after an appeal.

The women were ordered off a flight and checked for whether they had given birth after a baby was found abandoned in an airport bin in 2020 — an incident that sparked global outrage.

An Australian judge last year found the state-owned airline could not be prosecuted under the laws governing global travel, and said the proposition its staff could have intervened was "fanciful, trifling, implausible, improbable, [and] tenuous".

The women appealed, with the full bench of the Federal Court finding the primary judge erred in throwing out the case.

The five women filed a lawsuit in 2021, against Qatar Airways, Qatar's Civil Aviation Authority and the operators of Hamad International Airport, a firm called Matar.

They sought damages over the alleged "unlawful physical contact" and false imprisonment, which had caused mental health impacts including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Other passengers who were invasively searched — including from the UK and New Zealand — were not part of the case.

All three respondents applied to have the case thrown out before it reached trial.

Justice John Halley in April 2024 found that Qatar Airways could not be held responsible under a multilateral treaty called the Montreal Convention, which is used to establish airline liability in the event of death or injury to passengers.

Even if the airline could be sued, the women's case had no real prospect of success, he said: Qatar Airways staff could not have influenced the actions of Qatari police who removed the women from the flight, nor the nurses who examined them in ambulances on the tarmac.

Justice Halley also struck out the women's case against Qatar's aviation regulator, saying it was immune from foreign prosecution, but said they could proceed with parts of their case against Matar.

However, Justice Angus Stewart, Justice Debra Mortimer and Justice James Stellios found the primary judge had made rulings on issues that could only be decided at trial.

They upheld Justice Halley's decision to throw out the case against Qatar's aviation regulator, but said the complainants had the right to sue both Qatar Airways and Matar.

The case is now expected to continue to trial in the Federal Court, the women's lawyer Damian Sturzaker said.

"Our clients endured a traumatic experience on that night in Doha and they deserve to have their day in court and compensation for their suffering," Sturzaker said, according to The Australian.

The women have previously told the BBC they did not consent to the examinations and were not given explanations for what was happening to them.

"I felt like I had been raped," said British grandmother Mandy, who asked to withhold her surname.

Another said she thought she was being kidnapped and held hostage.

The Gulf state launched a criminal prosecution which led to a suspended jail term for an airport official.

But Sturzaker in 2021 told the BBC the women were suing because of a perceived lack of action from Doha.

They wanted a formal apology from Qatar and for the airport to change its procedures to make sure the incident does not happen again. — BBC