Originally Posted by
BBC
"We were invited to Qatar by the prime minister's office to see new flagship accommodation for low-paid migrant workers in early May - but while gathering additional material for our report, we ended up being thrown into prison for doing our jobs.
A dozen security officers frisked us in the street, shouting at us when we tried to talk. They took away our equipment and hard drives and drove us to their headquarters.
We were never accused of anything directly, instead they asked over and over what we had done and who we had met.
An hour into my grilling, one of the interrogators brought out a paper folder of photographs which proved they had been trailing me in cars and on foot for two days since the moment I'd arrived. I was shown pictures of myself and the team standing in the street, at a coffee shop, on board a bus and even lying next to a swimming pool with friends. It was a shock. I had never suspected I was being tailed.
In perfect English and with more than a touch of malice, he threatened us with another four days in prison - to teach us a lesson.
I began my second night in prison on a disgusting soiled mattress. At least we did not go hungry, as we had the previous day. One of the guards took pity on us and sent out for roast chicken with rice.
In the early hours of the next morning, just as suddenly as we were arrested, we were released.
Bizarrely, we were allowed to join the organised press trip for which we had come.
It was as if nothing had happened, despite the fact that our kit was still impounded, and we were banned from leaving the country.
I can only report on what has happened now that our travel ban has been lifted.
No charges were brought, but our belongings have still not been returned.
Other journalists and activists, including a German TV crew, have also recently been detained.
How the country handles the media, as it prepares to host one of the world's most watched sporting events, is now also becoming a concern.
Mustafa Qadri, Amnesty International's Gulf migrant rights researcher, told us the detentions of journalists and activists could be attempts "to intimidate those who seek to expose labour abuse in Qatar".
Qatar, the world's richest country for its population size of little more than two million people, is pouring money into trying to improve its reputation for allowing poor living standards for low-skilled workers to persist.
Before we were detained, I met an 18-year-old mechanic, one of the 400,000 Nepalese workers there.
He said he wanted to support his older brothers because his father had died and the family was struggling financially.
He paid a recruitment agency in Nepal $600 to arrange his visa to work in Qatar and was told he would earn $300 a month.
When he arrived he was told his salary, as a labour camp cleaner for air conditioning mechanics, was in fact $165 a month. He said he has never been given a copy of the contract he signed. Worse still, he said he could not understand it as it was in English.
It's a very common trick that foreign recruitment agents play before workers even get to Qatar, and very difficult for Qatar itself to police, although it says it is trying."
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