Two journalists from Norwegian state television were arrested while reporting on the upcoming FIFA World Cup in Qatar and held for over 30 hours before being freed. The arrests sparked a diplomatic dispute between Norway and Qatar.
Qatar’s government accused NRK journalists Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani of “trespassing on private property and filming without a permit” as the two returned Wednesday to Norway following their arrest. The journalists contended they had verbal permission from those they filmed there.
“They had gotten all the permissions needed to conduct interviews,” NRK boss Thor Gjermund Eriksen told a news conference at its headquarters in Oslo. The security forces had a “tone that was quite harsh and they wanted to intimidated us,” but he said ”there were never threats or violence.”The journalists told NRK that they were not allowed to leave Qatar with their equipment. The Norwegian Union of Journalists and the country’s football federation both criticized the journalists’ arrest.
Qatar’s government said in a statement that the two had been arrested after receiving a complaint from an unidentified private property owner in the country’s Industrial Area, which is home to labor camps. It said that Ekeland had applied for a film permit, but authorities hadn’t granted it before he went to the site.
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