Women lose bid to sue Qatar Airways over invasive exams
By Tiffanie Turnbull
Five Australian women who were strip-searched and invasively examined at Doha airport have failed in their bid to sue Qatar Airways.
They and other 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.
The incident sparked public outrage and it was condemned by several nations.
An Australian court found the state-owned airline was immune from foreign prosecution.
The five women filed a claim in the Federal Court of Australia in 2021, seeking 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 – including from the UK and New Zealand – were not part of the lawsuit.
But on Wednesday, Justice John Halley found that the laws governing global travel meant Qatar Airways – and the country’s aviation regulator – could not be sued.
He pointed to a multilateral treaty called the Montreal Convention which is used to establish airline liability in the event of death or injury to passengers.
He also found that the airline’s 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.
