A California couple who spent nearly a year in a Qutar jail on child-endangerment charges were blocked from departing the country hours after they were acquitted from the 2013 death of their adopted daughter, the Washington Post reports.
Matthew and Grace Huang of Los Angeles were stranded at Doha’s Hamad International Airport while U.S. officials leveraged diplomatic and public pressure on the Qatari rulers. US Secretary of State John Kerry phoned Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad al-Attiya late Sunday urging Qatar to permit the return of the couple.
The couples’ delay at the airport came hours after an appeals court judge repealed a guilty verdict and three-year prison sentence for the Huang who were arrested in January 2013 after the death of Gloria, a Ghanaian girl they adopted. Murder charges were initially brought against them in a highly unusual case that garnered international attention and allegations of cultural bias on the part of the Qatari officials, as Washington Post reports.
The reason for the detention at the airport is unclear.
After the acquittal, the Huangs hoped to immediately leave Qatar and reunite with their two adopted sons, who they have not seen in months.
The Huangs moved to Doha with their three children in 2012 after Matthew Huang accepted an engineering job related to Qatar’s preparations to host the World Cup in 2022. But in Qatar, Gloria suffered from health problems that the family claimed was from a chronic eating disorder. At the time of her adoption, she suffered from giardia, a parasitic condition that sometimes results in a long-term impairment of the body’s ability to absorb nutrients from food.
Gloria collapsed at home on Jan. 14 after refusing to eat for several days. She died at a Doha hospital of what doctors said was cardiac arrest, as Washington Post reports. Qatari officials suspected foul play and accused the Huangs of deliberately depriving their daughter of food and water. A prosecutor initially sought the death penalty and briefly put the couple’s two boys in an orphanage.
The US State Department has repeatedly expressed concern over the case, and a number of advocacy groups have championed the case as well. The California Innocence Project, in particular, provided legal experts who serve as pro bono counsel for the family. They contend that the charges against the Huangs were “rooted in transparently racial and cultural prejudice” by Qatari law enforcement officials, the group said in a statement. The Huangs are of Asian descent, and their three adopted children were born in Africa.
