Qatari regime refuses to reveal death report of British worker

CAIRO –11 November 2017: Zac Cox, a British worker in Qatar, died in January after he fell 40 meters because his safety equipment failed. The Qatari regime has refused to hand over his death report to his family or the British coroner.

Cox was killed while building Qatar’s Khalifa Stadium for the World Cup, and his death has been met with a wall of silence from the Qatari authorities, leaving his relatives distraught and angry for 10 months.

This week, the coroner criticized the family’s reaction about how much the Foreign Office has done to force the Qatari regime to submit the reasons of the death.
The British police have been unable to extract information from the misleading Qatari system or the array of firms involved in the work.

Cox’s wife died in 2015, and his two sisters-in-law, Ella Joseph and Hazel Mayes, have been trying to reveal the truth behind his death. Joseph pointed out that 10 months on, they still don’t have an official account of why their brother died and who was responsible.

The results of a postmortem examination in Qatar had not been supplied to the British inquest despite a request, coroner Hamilton-Deeley said. The coroner agreed on Thursday to the family’s request to delay the closing of the inquest, hoping that more information might be released from the Qatari regime.

Reference to an inquiry into his death was made in the supreme committee’s second annual human rights report published in June, but it said full details could not be disclosed due to a continuing local authority inquiry. Cox was working on a suspended catwalk platform, on which cameras, sound and lighting could be installed, when a lever hoist failed and one end of the catwalk dropped, leaving it hanging. Overloaded, Cox’s lifeline snapped, and he fell.

International human rights organizations and committees announced the formation of an International Equity Committee to look into the violations committed against Doha-based workers in the 2022 World Cup’s related venues, according to Emirate-led newspaper Kahleej.

About 800,000 migrant workers in Qatar are involved in construction projects, representing 40 percent of the migrant workers there, according to a HRW report.

The formation of the said committee was announced at the meeting of the seventh session of the seven state members of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, which started last Monday and ends Friday, in Vienna, Austria.

The organizations involved are the African Organization for Heritage and Human Rights, the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Europe and Britain, the Arab Network of National Human Rights Institutions and the Gulf League for Rights and Freedoms, as well as the families of victims of the inhumane work conditions experienced during their work at the sports facilities of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.