Qatar’s Supreme Court of Justice ordered the retrial of a Qatari man who was handed death penalty by an appeal court in a murder case

Qatar’s Supreme Court of Justice ordered the retrial of a Qatari man who was handed death penalty by an appeal court in a murder case. The highest judicial authority rarely issues verdicts but it generally supervises the correctness of the two lower courts’ procedures. According to the defendant’s lawyer, the Supreme Court found defects in the implementation of law during the previous hearings. The appeal court in January 2007 upheld the death penalty against the 49-year old man, who was convicted by a first instance court for “premeditated murder.” According to the charge sheet, the accused murdered his compatriot colleague, also in mid-40s, following a row on September 20, 2005. “The accused rammed the victim with his car after a drunken brawl over a woman from a GCC country who was present in a party at a farm,” the prosecution said. The defendant’s lawyer argued that the witnesses, including the woman herself, “were all drunk at the time of the incident and hence their testimonies could not be reckoned with.”