Expat gets one year jail for forging consulate stamp

DohaA Doha Criminal Court has sentenced an Asian expatriate man to one year in jail for forging a government stamp on his university degree, local Arrayah daily reported Friday.The accused is also to be deported upon completing the sentence.The public prosecution had charged the accused for forging the attestation stamp of the Qatari consulate in his home country and put it on his official university degree.However, the lawyer of the accused refuted such charges saying that the accused did not have to do such thing because he already had an authentic university degree and he did not know anything about the counterfeit process in the official stamp.He argued that forensic evidence only indicates that the stamp was forged and did not refer to the document itself.The lawyer also said that the accused, in good intention, submitted the document to the attestation department in Doha, without knowing that something was wrong with it. The court was not convinced with the argument and handed down the sentence.