Doha seeks to foil opposition conference in UK: Qatari opponents

CAIRO – 9 September 2017: Doha has exerted its best efforts to hinder the Qatari opposition conference due in September 14 in London for fear of exposing Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim’s terrorism funding mechanisms and banding people together against the Qatari regime, Qatari opposition figure Khalid Al-Hail said.

“Qatari regime and Al Jazeera channel associates have been trying to figure out where the opposition conference will be held in order to foil it,” Al-Hail revealed on his official Twitter account on Saturday.

“Qatar’s fools are controlled by Iran and Turkey,” Qatari opposition figure Ibrahim Bahzad tweeted on Saturday.

Tarek Fahmy, political expert, said that the Qatari opposition conference deems important to avoid the Qatari lobby tricks located in European countries.

Fahmy revealed to Egypt Today that Qatar is undermining any possible movements by the opposition overseas, indicating that “Qatar has attempted to defame the conference and claims this may deem interference in the domestic affairs of the tiny Gulf state.”

“Qatar follows the same policy that the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood was following.

Both threaten their opponents and fight opinions different from theirs,” parliamentarian Tarek Al-Kholy said.

Al-Kholy anticipated that Doha administration will send some “hired supporters” to London to chant against the Qatari opposition figures during the conference.

The conference will be attended by a large number of Arab and international political figures, academics and media professionals, and Qataris to discuss the Qatari crisis.

Steeve Page, vice president of the European Center for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR), announced late August in a statement the center’s support to the conference, which is considered the first Arab and international conference on the Qatari crisis.

Page added in his statement that the center, as well as a number of various human rights organizations and personalities in Europe will participate in the conference and are waiting to discuss the crisis.

It has been three months since the Qatari crisis in the Middle East broke out, where Qatar was faced with the four Arab countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, cutting all diplomatic ties with Doha, amid allegations that Qatar is funding and supporting terrorism.