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Qatar has released eight former Indian naval officers sentenced to death last year for spying for Israel, the Indian government said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government said it welcomed the release of the men, adding that seven of the eight had returned to India.
“We appreciate the decision of the Emir of the State of Qatar to allow the release and return home of these citizens,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs said on Monday.
The men worked for Dahra Global, a Doha-based defense services company, and were arrested in August 2022 and held incommunicado. They were sentenced to death in October last year. Their release followed months of negotiations between Indian officials and their Qatari counterparts. In December, Qatar overturned the death sentences but kept the men in detention.
Neither Qatar nor India had released details of the charges for which they were convicted, but a person familiar with the case confirmed to the Financial Times in October that the eight had been accused of spying for Israel. Qatar rarely applies the death penalty. The last execution in the Gulf state took place in 2020.
“We are happy to have these seven Indian citizens back,” Vinay Kwatra, India’s foreign minister, said at a briefing in New Delhi on Monday afternoon. “An eighth Indian citizen has also been released and we continue to see how quickly their return to India will be possible.”
Kwatra said Modi had “personally and consistently supervised all developments in this case and never backed down from any initiative that could ensure the return of Indian citizens home.”
The release of the men follows a major liquefied natural gas deal between Qatar, one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, and India. Last week, state-owned QatarEnergy announced it had entered into a 20-year sales and purchase agreement with India’s state-controlled Petronet LNG to supply 7.5 million tonnes of LNG to India.
After a two-day visit to the United Arab Emirates, Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamir bin Hamad al-Thani on Wednesday in Doha, India said.
India has sought closer ties with energy-rich Gulf states, and Qatar is home to an Indian diaspora community of about 840,000 people, mostly foreign workers, according to the Indian government.
Qatar has no formal relations with Israel. But he played a leading role in brokering negotiations to secure aid to Israel’s besieged Gaza Strip and the release of other hostages kidnapped by the militant group Hamas on October 7, after an attack on southern Israel that killed more of 1,200 people and pushed the Jewish state to declare war.
The Modi government, which has built close ties with Israel in defense and other sectors, has called for an end to the war with Hamas and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, but has curbed its criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza, which, according to Hamas health officials, has killed more than 28,000 people.
This year, India faces national elections, to be held in stages across April and May, in which Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party will seek a third five-year term.