India is looking into a number of ways to free eight former members of the Indian Navy who were given the death penalty by a court in Qatar on charges of spying for Israel. That one choice is the chance of a royal pardon from the Emir of Qatar.
India is holding a diplomatic exercise in Qatar with a number of people to talk about different choices.
As a side note, Qatar does not usually put people to death who are in jail there. Amnesty International says that the country put to death one sentenced Nepali migrant worker in 2020, which was the first time in 20 years that this had happened. The Gulf state had said in the past that the death penalty was the same as life in prison.
The people who used to work for the Indian Navy now work for a private company called Al Dahra, which shut down later. No one ever found out what charges were brought against them.
On Monday, S. Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs, met with the families of the eight suspects and told them that the Indian government would do everything it could to get them released. Monday, Admiral Hari Kumar, the head of the Indian Navy, said that the Center was doing “everything” to get eight Navy soldiers released.
A big part of the relationship between India and Qatar is the Indian community living there. Nearly 700,000 Indians are thought to live in the Gulf country.
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