Qatar sentences a smuggler to death for a boatload of hashish and opium

In March 2013 a criminal court in Qatar sentenced a man to death for smuggling hashish and opium. It was one of at least three such sentences in eight years. None is known to have been carried out, but they show that the death penalty in Qatar’s drug law is more than a line of text.

The speedboat

Two men rented a boat, saying they were going fishing. The coast guard caught them carrying what looked like sacks of flour onto an island. The cargo was about 600 kilograms of hashish and opium.

The prosecutor described the first man as a known trafficker who had escaped the authorities before. The judges, unanimously, sentenced him to death and a fine of 500,000 riyals. The second man was sentenced to life imprisonment and 300,000 riyals; he may have acted under duress, after the first threatened him with a firearm.

Three sentences

Reported	Cargo	Sentence
March 2008	160 kg of hashish	Death by firing squad, in the defendant’s absence
March 2013	About 600 kg of hashish and opium	Death; life for the accomplice
December 2016	About 120 kg of hashish and opium	Death; life for two others

The 2008 defendant, an Iranian, had slipped away from detectives months before the verdict. In 2016 five men were caught diving for three sealed barrels left in the sea; besides the death sentence and two life terms, one man got seven years and one a year for using drugs. A Qatari newspaper called that verdict rare.

What the law says

The copy of Law 9 of 1987 that was read sets ten to twenty years in prison for importing, producing or growing drugs for trade, and a fine of 100,000 to 300,000 riyals. For a repeat offender the penalty is death or life imprisonment, with a fine of 300,000 to 500,000 riyals. The fines in the 2013 and 2016 cases sit at the top of that range.

Sentences without executions

When the 2013 sentence was reported, Qatar had recorded no execution of any kind for more than a decade. Amnesty International counted at least 19 people on death row at the end of 2011. No report of an execution for a drug offence was found for this history.

Why the index did not move

The 2013 sentence applied a law in force since 1987; it changed no rule. Qatar already scores at or near zero on every segment, and the index marks it among the countries whose law allows death for cannabis offences, in practice for trafficking.^[1][2][3][4]