User:Prootpi1/Farukh Azad

Farukh Mohammad U. K. Azad (Pakistan, 15 December 1981). He lives in Qatar and received Qatari nationality in 2006 because one of his ancestors fought in the war against Bahrain. Before being granted the Qatari nationality, Farukh Azad had been the “tea boy” at the head of Qatar's Olympic Committee. Since June 2009 Azad is the assistant of Dr. Abdulla Al Kubaisi, Executive Director at Qatar Foundation.

Farukh Azad is famous since 2009 in the media, in a case around the Belgian business man Philippe Bogaert who is kept as his hostage in Qatar. Officially, Farukh is not Bogaert's "jailor" but his sponsor (expats doing business in some Middle East countries need someone to “sponsor” them, in order to be able to work in the region). Since 2007 he is the main responsible for keeping Philippe Bogaert in Qatar simply by refusing an exit permit. Philippe Bogaert, living since December 2008 at the residence of the Belgian Ambassador in Doha, has decided to tell his story and launched his SOS on Twitter and trough a blog, which resulted into great media coverage locally in Belgium and in the rest of the world. Amongst a lot of other international newspapers was The Independent.