Qatar State Security () is the state

intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, Intelligence analysis, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy obj ...

Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...

. It is an independent organization.

History

It was created in 2004, after the General Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat) and the Investigation and State Security Service (mubahith) merged. It performs

internal security Internal security is the act of keeping peace within the borders of a sovereign state or other Self-governance, self-governing territories, generally by upholding the national law and defending against internal security threats. This task and rol ...

investigations, gathers

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

, and has primary responsibility for

sedition Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech or organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, establ ...

and

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...

cases. The agency has been accused of human rights violations over arbitrary arrests of citizens without court warrants for expressing opinions on social media. On February 7, 2022,

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...

drafted a report out which states that the State Security Apparatus Law "does not provide for any judicial oversight over such detention, and the Working Group was informed that in practice, such detention leads to very long periods of deprivation of liberty, in violation of international human rights norms," according to a statement from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention after an official visit to Qatar in 2019. Now, everyone has the freedom to leave any country, including their own, according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Qatar adopted in 2018. The treaty permits nations to place limitations on that right, provided that they are authorized by law and necessary and reasonable to safeguard the country's security, public order, health, morals, or other rights and freedoms. On 16 August 2024 CIA director Bill Burns awarded head of Qatar State Security Abdullah bin Mohammed al-Khulaifi the

George Tenet George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Pr ...

medal for his role in strengthening intelligence cooperation with the USA and "maintaining national and regional security". The ceremony took place at the CIA headquarters this week, as the two countries play key mediating roles in Gaza ceasefire talks, which were held in Doha.Head of Qatari intelligence receives top CIA award for security cooperation

The New Arab ''The New Arab'' or ''Al-Araby Al-Jadeed'' () is a London-based pan-Arab news outlet owned by Qatari company Fadaat Media. It launched an Arabic-language website in March 2014 and an Arabic language daily newspaper in September 2014. The Engli ...

, 16 August 2024

References

Law enforcement agencies of Qatar Qatari intelligence agencies 2004 establishments in Qatar {{Qatar-stub