A federal court decision clears the way for the five Australian women removed from a Sydney-bound Qatar Airways flight, strip-searched and invasively examined at Doha’s Hamad International Airport in 2020 to sue the airline directly.
The Federal Court’s appeal decision against the ruling that the airline could not face trial grants the women the right to pursue legal action against Qatar Airways Group for the invasive searches.
The October 2020 incident saw around a dozen women forcibly removed from the QR flight by armed guards and escorted into ambulances, where four underwent bodily examinations without consent.
It followed a Qatari police investigation to find the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned in a bathroom at Doha Airport and the invasive searches sparked international outrage.
The invasive searches incident also formed part of the “national interest” basis of the then-Federal Government’s denial of QR’s request to double flights to Australia in 2023.
The Australian women sued Qatar Airways Group, the government-run Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) and airport operation and management company Matar, for negligence, assault, false imprisonment and battery.
The case was dismissed in 2024 with the primary judge finding the state-owned airline could not be prosecuted under the laws governing global travel.
Justice John Halley found that Qatar Airways should not have to go to trial because its employees could not have influenced the actions of Qatari police.
He also found that the QCAA was immune from the court’s jurisdiction and said the five women could refile their claims for damages against Matar.
The women lodged an appeal against the decision in April 2024 in order to pursue QR and the QCAA directly.
On 24 July 2025, Federal Justice Angus Stewart said the court found that Halley had erred in his judgment and ordered Qatar Airways and Matar to pay the costs of the appeal but dismissed the appeal against the QCAA, saying the evidence showed its activities “were in pursuit of public functions of the State of Qatar”.
