LA couple gets 3 years in jail in Qatar for death of adopted child

DOHA - A Los Angeles couple were sentenced to three years in jail in Qatar on Thursday for causing the death of their adopted daughter, who was found to have died of starvation, in a case that has raised concern in Washington.

Matthew and Grace Huang were arrested in January last year after their 8-year-old adopted daughter, Gloria, died unexpectedly.

An autopsy found that she had died of "cachexia and dehydration", while the prosecutor charged the couple with "murder with intent by forced starvation". Cachexia is an irreversible loss of body mass.

The couple argued that Gloria had been suffering from malnutrition-related diseases since they adopted her from Ghana at the age of 4, and that the Qatari authorities had failed to acknowledge this.

"We have just been wrongfully convicted and we feel as if we are being kidnapped by the Qatar judicial system," Matthew said. "This verdict is wrong and appears to be nothing more than an effort to save face."

The US State Department said on Wednesday that Washington was concerned by "indications that not all of the evidence was being weighed by the court and that cultural misunderstandings may have been leading to an unfair trial".

The judge reading the verdict did not specify what offense the couple had been convicted of, but the prosecution had earlier downgraded an original charge of premeditated murder to one of "murder by negligence".

David House, an international crisis agency working with the family, said the defense lawyer was expected to get a full briefing on the verdict within days.

A website created to publicize the case said Matthew, a Stanford-trained engineer, had moved to Qatar with his wife and their three young children in 2012 to help oversee a big infrastructure project related to the 2022 soccer World Cup.

Gloria died on Jan. 15, 2013, and Qatari police charged the couple the next day. The website said the other children had been put in an orphanage.

No detailed explanation of the charges has been published, but the website said Qatari officials had concluded "that the murder may have been done in order to harvest her organs or to conduct medical experiments on her".

The pair spent nearly a year in prison before being released on their own recognizance, but were not allowed to leave Qatar, the website said.

The judge said they had also been fined 15,000 riyals ($4,100) and would be expelled after completing their sentences. — Reuters