Briton found hanged in Qatar hotel allegedly tortured by secret police

A 52-year-old British man died weeks after allegedly being tortured by the secret police in Qatar for days.

The man, identified as Marc Bennett, was found hanged in a Doha hotel in December 2019. He was found dead ten weeks after he was arrested at the offices of his employer, Qatar Airways. He was taken blindfolded and handcuffed to a state security detention centre.

Bennett later told his family how he was "stripped naked, blasted with high-pressure hoses slammed against walls and subjected to sleep deprivation techniques," for three weeks.

Lawyers from the United Nations said that there have been "credible allegations" of ill-treatment of Bennett. He was a senior travel executive and had been headhunted to help boost Qatar's tourism industry.

He was arrested after he resigned from his job at Qatar Airways. He was considering a move to Saudi at a time when Qatar and Saudi ties were not at their best.

According to a report in The Times, he was reported to police shortly after his resignation on the pretext that he had been sending "highly confidential documents" to a private email address.

"Marc left the business and evidence subsequently came to light showing that over a period of time he had emailed highly confidential documents relating to Qatar Airways to a private email address without authorisation. He was arrested and then this became a police matter," a spokesperson for Qatar Airways said.

He was later found dead at a hotel in Doha with no suicide note. According to his wife Nancy Bennett, he had spoken to her the night before he died "laughing and joking."

"There are so many questions. He left here with the whole world ahead of him," she told The Times.

Qatari authorities ruled his death as suicide, but a coroner in the UK ruled there was "no specific evidence of suicidal intent and that "the circumstances of the months leading up to his death remain unclear." His case was closed last September.