The Federal Court has thrown out a case brought by five Australian women trying to sue Qatar Airways over invasive and degrading strip searches at Doha Airport in October 2020.
The incident caused global headlines when more than a dozen women were hauled off a Qatar flight to Sydney and forced to undergo physical examinations in an ambulance on the airport tarmac, following the discovery of a newborn baby in a toilet cubicle at Hamad International Airport.
The women had hoped to use international aviation conventions to sue Qatar Airways for damages for “unlawful physical contact”, and the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) and airport operations company MATAR for assault and false imprisonment.
But on Wednesday, Federal Court Justice John Halley dismissed the case against the airline and QCAA, finding the alleged assaults did not happen on board the Qatar Airways plane and were not conducted by any employee of the airline.
“The security operation was directed by officers of the MOI [Qatari Ministry of the Interior], and the nurse was not an employee of either Qatar Airways or MATAR,” Justice Halley said.
“Further, no material facts have been alleged that would establish that either the nurse or any officer of the MOI was subject to any control of Qatar Airways or MATAR.
“The proposition that Qatar Airways was able to exert any relevant control over the officers of the MOI conducting the police operation or the nurse in the ambulance can fairly be characterised as fanciful, trifling, implausible, improbable, tenuous or one that is contradicted by all the available documents or other materials.”
Justice Halley said the case could be refiled against MATAR, as it had not been proven its staff or contractors had not given “specific directions” to the women as they were being taken away for the searches.
The women were able to launch the case in an Australian court under the Montreal Convention, which governs airline liability around the world and allows cases to be filed against airlines in the jurisdiction where an aggrieved passenger lives.
Justice Halley found the Montreal Convention did not apply to the case as it did not happen on board the plane, or in the process of embarking or disembarking the aircraft.
“I do not accept … that it is reasonably arguable that the process of disembarking would extend to an invasive examination conducted by a nurse in an ambulance on the tarmac at the direction of officers of a state instrumentality, as part of a police operation, to determine the identity of the mother of an abandoned newborn baby,” he said.
“Such an invasive examination can readily be distinguished from any examination that might be conducted as part of security screening of passengers by airline staff at the gate prior to passengers boarding an aircraft or after they had disembarked an aircraft.”
When the incident first came to light in late 2020, then-foreign minister Marise Payne described it as a “grossly disturbing, offensive, concerning set of events”.
Wednesday’s judgment noted the Qatari government had expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident at the time, quoting comments from the country’s deputy prime minister saying it was “considered a violation of Qatar’s laws and values, and that the officials involved have been referred to the Public Prosecution Office”.
The ABC has requested a comment from the office of Transport Minister Catherine King in response to the ruling.
Late last year, Ms King said the strip searches were “context” in her decision to reject a bid by Qatar Airlines to increase the number of flights it was allowed to operate into Australia.
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