The Court of Appeals has set May 31 for delivering a verdict on the “Filipino espionage” case.
Three Filipinos were convicted of espionage by a lower Doha court last year. The convicts appeared before the court yesterday under guard with their lawyer, a representative of the Philippine Embassy and some of their relatives.
The defence lawyer argued that his clients were not guilty as the crime of spying has not been proved against them and there was no tangible evidence to substantiate the accusation. He said that most of the information that were “dealt with” regarding aircraft and tanks was already available on the Internet.
In May last year, the Criminal Court had sentenced one of the accused to death and the two others to life imprisonment for espionage and leaking security information to a foreign country, and thereby harming the national security of Qatar.
The Philippine government has denied it was spying on Qatar.
“We are categorically denying that we are engaged in espionage,” Foreign department spokesman Charles Jose was earlier quoted as saying.
According to a source, the Filipinos were charged with leaking information about weaponry, aircraft, maintenance and servicing records between 2009 and 2010 to intelligence officials in the Philippines.
It said the man who received the death penalty worked at a major state-run Qatari company and spied for a “state security force” in the Philippines, while Qatar Air Force employed the other two as technicians.
