WEBVTT - #419 Jason Flom with Matt Huang 0:00:02.880 --> 0:00:06.080 In twenty twelve, an American civil engineer named Matt Huang 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:10.520 was offered an intriguing opportunity to evaluate the wastewater and 0:00:10.600 --> 0:00:13.720 reuse systems in the Middle Eastern country of Qatar as 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.360 they prepared to host the twenty twenty two World Cup. 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:21.200 So Matt, his wife, and their three adopted children embarked 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.759 on what seemed like an exciting new adventure. But on 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:30.520 January fifteenth, twenty thirteen, tragedy struck. Their middle child, Gloria, 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:34.239 had become mysteriously ill. She was rushed to the hospital 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:38.360 where CPR was performed, but she passed away. It was 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.960 reported that her death was caused by starvation and dehydration, 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:46.400 and the Katari police knew exactly who to blame. But 0:00:46.640 --> 0:01:01.440 this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrong Conviction. Today's 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:06.640 episode is like a crazy mixture of Locked Up Abroad 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:11.480 meets the Twilight Zone meets No Good Deed Goes Unpunished 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:16.480 the Extreme Edition. Okay, and you'll understand as we go 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:19.240 along what I mean by all those references. We're gonna 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:23.039 be telling the story of Matt Huang, who is on 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:26.120 the air with us right now. Matt, Welcome to the show. 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:29.360 Thank you, And like I always say, I'm happy you're here, 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:31.880 well I'm happier here because you're not there, But I'm 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:33.959 sorry for what you had to go through to be 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.000 here on the show today. But with us, we have 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.679 somebody who everybody who listens to the show will recognize 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.080 one of my personal heroes, the founder of the California 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:48.600 Innocence Project, Professor Justin Brooks. So Justin, welcome back. Thank 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.600 you so much. Now, most of the cases we've covered, 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:54.360 they happen right here in the US, but Matt yours 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:57.400 happened halfway across the world in the Middle East, in 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.360 the nation of Qatar, to be exact. But before we 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:03.760 get to all of that, let's hear a little bit 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:08.400 about your life before all of this tragedy and insanity 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:08.919 took place. 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.880 I grew up in southern California in the LA area. 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.839 I'm a Chinese American. My parents are immigrants, but I'm 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:19.240 born and raised in the US. I have a bachelor's 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:23.640 degree from University California, Irvine, and I have a master's 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:28.160 degree in environmental engineering from Stanford University. I met and 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:33.240 married my wife, Grace, and we adopted three children from Africa. 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:38.000 My older son and my daughter Gloria are from Ghana. 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:42.840 My younger son is from Uganda. Being Chinese ethnically, you know, 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.399 everyone asked us, especially at that time, you know, why 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:47.800 not adopt from China. At that point, China had the 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:51.280 one child policy, and I just didn't feel like we 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:53.919 wanted to support what they were doing there because most 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:57.120 of their kids were available for adoption because the government 0:02:57.120 --> 0:02:59.040 forced them to be, and not because they didn't have 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:02.960 parents love them. And we picked an adoption agency and 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.600 I'm an only child. At some point in the process, 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:07.880 we realized, oh, kind of having siblings might be kind 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.080 of nice, And there were a bunch of siblings in 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:14.040 the orphanage in Ghana thatot our adoption agency was working with, 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:16.040 and so that was one of the reasons we end 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:18.400 up going to Ghana for our first adoption. 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.760 And so that's when you adopted the two older siblings, 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:24.160 one of whom was your daughter Gloria. Now, at some 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:27.079 point after you and your wife adopted your third child, 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.840 you got what may have it must have sounded like 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:32.919 a really exciting opportunity halfway across the world in guitar. 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.360 At that point in time, Qatar had been awarded the 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:40.080 twenty twenty two FIFA World Cup for soccer. They had 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.840 tons of people who were there to you know, do construction, 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.120 to do projects to get ready for that World Cup. 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:49.160 My company that I was working for at the time 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:53.200 transferred us there. I was working on a project looking 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:57.080 at planning on their wastewater systems and their reuse. 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.440 And so you and your family were living in the 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.000 capital city of Doha. Can you give us a bit 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:04.600 of europe first impression. 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.600 There's basically one city for all intents and purposes. It's 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:12.000 a pretty small country. It's probably a two hour drive, 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:15.200 you know, on a freeway in one direction, about an 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.320 hour drive in the other way. It's a monarchy. They're 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:22.120 only neighboring country, Saudi Arabia. It's one of the richest 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:24.640 countries in the world because of oil and natural gas. 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.120 The citizens actually get paid, at least when we were there, 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:30.640 it was something like about twenty six hundred dollars US 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:34.800 a month a person, including children, from the government. And 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:37.919 that's actually how the monarchy keeps power because they share 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:40.960 the oil and natural gas revenues with the citizens. It's 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:44.719 got about two million people in the country, but eighty 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:47.839 five percent of the people are foreigners, which mean there 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.880 are foreign workers that have been brought in. The majority 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.800 of the people who get brought into work are in 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:58.159 construction and those types of industries, and a lot of 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:01.440 these workers are paid three hundre buxham up or less. 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.200 It's sort of like a country of billionaires, so you 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:08.160 have to import a working class. It is a huge 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:13.679 amount of extraordinarily wealthy people and then this massive underclass. 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:17.560 There is definitely a social hierarchy. So if you're a 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:21.320 Gulf Arab, you're treated much better, and I would argue 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:24.520 that there's probably five or six levels of that hierarchy. 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:29.880 If you're a white person, you're looked on much more highly. 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:34.200 And the fact that we are Asians put us lower 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:39.840 down that hierarchy, not as low as say being black, right, which. 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:42.479 Of course all three of your children were. And that 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:46.640 ethnic disparity later played into the minds of these investigators 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:50.320 who were they were accustomed to seeing human trafficking and 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:52.240 to those types of injustices. 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:54.839 I saw it just flying in and out of the airport. 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:58.120 You would see these large groups of people coming in 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:01.480 from India and Africa that were all coming to work 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.560 on the World Cup Games, and it was well reported 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:08.560 in the media that there is slave trading going on, 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:14.279 that negotiations would happen with like town elders in Africa India, 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.240 and then the next thing you know, two hundred guys 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:21.040 get shipped over to work on construction the desert, building 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:22.760 these buildings. I don't know if I ever talked to 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:23.159 you about this. 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:23.479 Matt. 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.080 I had this driver there and when he first picked 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:28.479 me up, I said, how do you like living here? 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:30.440 Because he was from the Philippines and he'd been there 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:32.680 like six months. He says, Oh, it's great, it's great, 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.599 blah blah blah, blah blah. Then he sees you on 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.440 the news and he knows about your case and he 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.039 knows why I'm there, and then he says to me, 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:44.400 this has been terrible. They took my passport when I 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:46.000 got in the country. They told me I was going 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:48.120 to make all this money, and they're not paying me anything. 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:51.359 I'm grateful I get to be a driver because I 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:53.800 see these guys dying every day in the desert who 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:57.200 are construction workers, who are living in the same dormitory 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.000 that I'm living in, And I'm just counting the days 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.040 until they give me my passport back so I can 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:02.920 leave the country. 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.240 I'm rarely at a loss for words, but I don't 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:06.000 have any words. 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:08.359 This is what's going on there, a country that we 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.760 gave the World Cup to. It's shocking there. You know, 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:14.240 there is this veneer of success, but beneath it, there's 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:17.400 this sort of repressive operation through the monarchy and the 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:21.440 control of the government and the justice system. And Matt's 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:22.920 story is sort of wrapped up in that. 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:26.320 And so while Matt and his family had to navigate 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:28.800 almost like a caste system as well as a language 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:33.280 that they just didn't understand, something truly tragic happened to 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.960 their adopted daughter from Ghana. I'm talking, of course about Gloria. 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:41.400 Gloria came from an environment of extreme, you know, a 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.800 kind of extremity that as Americans we can't even really comprehend. 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:49.400 She developed an eating disorder because she ate when the 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:52.200 food drops came, and so there were long periods of 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:55.960 time that literally they didn't have food, and Matt and 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:59.360 his wife were trying to develop good eating habits because 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:01.840 she would go on they called food strikes and would 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:06.760 neat for a few days. And so this had happened repeatedly. 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.720 So Gloria had been really struggling with this eating disorder, 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.520 and who knows what ramifications it was having on her 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:16.200 little fragile eight year old body. And that brings us 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:19.800 up to January fifteenth, twenty thirteen, just about six months 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:22.160 into the Huang family stint in Qatar. 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:26.600 I found my daughter Gloria in her room, sickly on 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:28.800 the floor, and we had been there like six months, 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:31.080 so I didn't think I even knew the number of emergency. 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:32.800 So I put her in the car, drove her to 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.200 the hospital and they worked on her CPR, and then 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:40.200 they told me she had died. And you know, I 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:42.120 was talking to my wife of course on the phone, 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:44.800 but my sons had gone to bed, so we woke 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:46.640 them up, told them what happened, drove them back from 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.320 the hospital, and basically they give us like a couple 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:53.640 minutes with Gloria, and then police started questioning us. They 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:57.320 separated me from my wife and my sons brought me 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.600 out to a vehicle in the hospital parking lot. There 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.640 were like twenty guys surrounding me and started peppering me with. 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:04.920 Questions in English. 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:08.839 In English, basically, they're starting to accuse me of you're 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.240 a bad father, you don't know what's going on with 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:14.520 your kid, and so they were going after me for 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:16.640 I don't know, an hour and a half or something, 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:20.240 and so at some point they drive me to a 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.320 police station, asked me a couple questions. At this point, 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:25.080 I have no idea where my wife and kids are. 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.280 And then they drove me to another police station where 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:32.000 now there was a couple guys that start interrogating me 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:34.760 and trying to make a written statement. That I speak 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:38.760 zero Arabic and these two guys are English is horrendous. 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:41.280 So they're typing this out in Arabic, you know, and 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.040 asking me questions and how you do a statement without 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:47.040 any translation is without me, and so then they print 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:49.640 now asked me to sign it, which I'm like, well, 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:51.400 tell me what you wrote. So he sat there and 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:54.880 he translated everything for me. And then after that this 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:57.480 other guy came in and he looked at it and 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.840 asked them to make these like changes to my statement. 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:03.839 Here far I signed it right, And so after they 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:05.760 made these changes, I was like, okay, read this to me, 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.080 tell me what's written, and they said, no, you just 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:11.600 have to sign it. I was brought into this room 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:14.080 where I found my wife and my sons. Now this 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:16.200 is six in the morning, after they had just made 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.600 me sign a statement where they made changes, and I 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:20.319 had no idea what changes they made. 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:23.920 So what was their theory? I mean, do we actually 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:25.440 know what was wrong with Gloria? 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.360 The hard answer is that we don't know, and we 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:31.800 don't know because the autopsy that was done was a 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:35.440 complete fabrication. When it was later looked into, you know, 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:39.040 organs were still pristine. There wasn't the kind of examination 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:41.160 that needed to be done in order to come to 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.480 a conclusion. What we do know is that the child 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:47.239 did not die of starvation, which is what the prosecution 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:52.280 was pursuing. She developed eating disorder, which meant she would 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:54.719 go on what they called food strikes and wouldn't eat 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:57.760 for a few days. When they find out about that, 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:01.520 that then becomes a foundation for a prosecut even though 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:04.480 in reality, the mere fact that a child doesn't eat 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:06.840 for a couple of days doesn't cause them to die, 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:10.400 and she clearly did not die of starvation. It's just literally, 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:14.760 scientifically medically impossible based on the evidence that that's how 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:18.160 she died. But Sadly, like many of these cases, it 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:22.680 started with an officer making assumptions and just rolling with them. 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:27.240 And in Matt's case, the assumption was their daughters deceased. 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:32.679 You see Asian parents, you see black children, and now, oh, 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:36.040 they must be slave traders. They're not a couple from 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:38.480 the United States who just went through a normal adoption 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:43.240 process and a Stanford trained engineer. They must be slave traders. 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:48.520 And they were being prosecuted for starving their daughter to 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:50.640 death to harvest her organs. 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:54.520 So Matt's engineering degree and work visa, there are American 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.800 passports and adoption papers. None of this seemed to make 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:01.560 a difference with the good police, and none of it 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:06.520 made them rethink this theory. But rather just going on appearances, 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.160 you know, with the cultural lens that they looked at 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:13.200 it through from the Katari social hierarchy, they felt that 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.520 it was plausible somehow that an Asian couple of a 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:21.000 loving family with all this history might be harvesting and 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:24.240 selling the internal organs of their African children. 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.000 There was all kinds of racism as well, just within 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.920 the evidence. As I recall one of the police reports, 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:34.400 it literally said, why would anyone adopt black children, challenging 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:36.000 the fact that they were adopted. 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.240 The police report actually said black children were ugly. 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:40.360 That's awful. 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:41.920 My kids are not ugly. 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:44.600 Yeah, they're saying out loud the stuff that people shouldn't 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:46.800 even be thinking and writing it in a police report 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:49.880 that's being introduced into evidence. And that's just an example 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:51.560 how outrageous this whole thing was. 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:06.920 You know, we see a time and again in this 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:09.960 country as well, that when a child dies, it's just 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:14.880 terrifying to people and it's so terribly difficult for them 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:19.080 to grapple with the idea that this could happen to 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:22.560 an innocent child. That's often too often someone is needless 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:26.640 escapegoaded for that death, the death of a child. And 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:30.280 this time it was two people, two loving parents who 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.280 still don't forget they had two other children, two boys. 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:36.440 So the first night they stayed with our friends, and 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:39.800 then after that they were thrown into a country orphanage 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:44.760 because the country government was concerned that we had trafficked 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:48.160 to them, even though our kids had us passports and 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:49.760 adoption documents. 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.240 Which were used to get them visas and some of 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:55.479 the photos that would put in evidence, which is insane 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.360 that anyoneuld think they're trafficking. It's like, here's Matt and 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:01.840 his family horseback ride. Here they are on a family 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:05.560 vacation when they're saying, you know, Glory doesn't have access 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:08.600 to water. Oh, here's our en sweet bathroom. Here's actual 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.800 water bottles next to her bed. I mean, it just 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.880 none of it could be put together to make any 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:18.600 sense except for what the truth was, just an average 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:22.600 American family with adopted kids and an overseas job. 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:26.440 Poor kids were traumatized, I mean and retraumatized. Right, First 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:29.640 they lose their their sibling, and then they lose their family, 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:31.880 and then they're in an orphanage and then they're. 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.320 Right, and you have to remember they're already orphaned once, right, 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:35.760 so trauma. 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:37.200 Right, So this is retraumatizing yet. 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:39.560 And they also don't speak Arabic. 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:42.640 So the two boys were once again without parents, now 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:45.680 though in a strange land where they didn't even speak 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.560 the language. I guess if there is a silver lion, 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:51.120 the only one is that they had each other. So 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.520 how long did this orphanage situation last? 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:58.120 It took about four months to get the kids out 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.360 of the cunty orphanage and then they had a travel 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:04.760 ban on them, so my mother in law came to 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:07.320 Qatar to come take care of them. After about four 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.600 more months, they were permitted to leave the country. 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:13.240 Right, which couldn't have happened soon enough. Meanwhile, you and 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.080 your wife are stuck in a Katari jail where I'm 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:20.920 going to imagine you felt terribly isolated, not understanding Arabic. 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:22.760 Well, because you have people from everywhere. It's kind of 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:25.480 broken English and broken Arabic are kind of the language 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.280 in practice inside the jail. I ended up being in 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:34.280 the jail for about ten months. I spent a lot 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:39.280 of time praying, reading my Bible, just hanging out with guys, 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:43.000 because honestly, it felt like a college dormitory at least 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:45.880 in terms of the relationship with the other guys. Two 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:50.280 thirds of the prison are people who feel like everyone 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:52.320 you're going to run on the street, that were on 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.760 trial for things that were so absurd. 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:58.080 There are one that sticks out in your mind. 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:03.120 There was one guy who was clearly scammed, and they 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:06.040 arrested him for theft and convicted him of theft because 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:08.120 they said, okay, fine, bring the scammer to court. Well, 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:09.520 the scammer wasn't even in the country. 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:13.480 During Matt's trial, your brother or brother in law. 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:13.880 My brother in law. 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:16.480 Yeah, your brother in law was arrested for taking a 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:20.000 photograph of the courthouse because that is an illegal act 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.080 and they had to sign confessions in order to be released. 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:25.760 I think a third of the people in there are 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:29.880 actually factually innocent, that's my best estimate. And another quarter 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:33.160 are in there because of out of wedlock sex cases. 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:34.760 Which wow, a quarter of them. 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:35.280 Yeah. 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:40.440 In general, out of wedlock sex is illegal in most 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.560 of the Gulf Arab countries and typically they would get 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:48.000 arrested if they were with a maid in usually a 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.000 Katari home. A member of the household could file a 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.880 case because there was a strange man in their house 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:58.000 who had come to visit their maid, so they charged 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:00.960 him with trespassing and without at locked sex, and they 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:03.800 will almost always get a trespassing conviction even if they 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:06.040 cannot demonstrate and out of wedlock sex conviction. 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:08.359 Don't visit there. 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.080 I mean, I think we've pretty much lost any chance 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.880 we have of getting sponsored by the Katari Tourism Board. 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:15.160 But that's the way it goes. 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.560 And there's definitely uneven persecution because we know that the 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:22.119 Katari employees were raping their maids, but they would never 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:23.359 go after the Kataris for that. 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:28.480 Whoao, So your Katari counterparts at work they were regularly 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:33.520 raping their maids but weren't facing any consequences or being prosecuted. 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.359 But people who were having consensual out of wedlock sex 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:38.520 they're punished. 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:40.240 That's the definition of irony. 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:43.600 Again, I don't have any words. I mean, it's just 0:17:43.920 --> 0:17:47.880 too much. So what were the actual charges and when 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:48.840 were you brought to court? 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:52.360 The first three months we didn't even know why we 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:54.600 were in prison. We didn't know what the charges were. 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.199 They were quote unquote investigating, but there was nothing that 0:17:57.320 --> 0:17:59.880 was set up. We would show up for a year, 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:04.280 maybe once a month. Three months in they gave us 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.800 first degree murder with the death penalty was the charge. 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:10.520 I've done death penalty cases in the United States and 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:12.960 they are the hardest cases to do with the most 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.560 amount of pressure. But still in the back of your head, 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:18.000 you know there's going to be appeals, there's going to 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:21.359 be time. Most people in the United States, actually on 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:24.640 death rowt die of old age before they get executed. 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.560 That is not true in the Middle East, and that 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.399 is not what Matt was facing in this case. 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:32.240 How did you even find out about that? 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:34.919 So I was contacted by a guy named Eric Voltz, 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:38.000 who has worked with a number of people who are 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:41.240 locked up overseas, and I got involved in the case 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:44.000 along with a team of lawyers. I got to actually 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.600 fly out to Guitar to participate in proceedings and prepare 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:51.879 witnesses for a trial, and it was the most surreal 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:55.080 legal experience I've had in my career. When you're in 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.840 a foreign environment, when you don't speak the language, there's 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:05.720 a whole nother layer of oppression, confusion, disorienting. I mean, 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:09.080 in Matt's case, I felt disoriented when you're sitting in 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:13.080 the courtroom and the trial is in Arabic and his wife, 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:15.800 by the way, had to be completely covered during trial 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:19.160 and weren't allowed to communicate with her. When you call 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.679 the witness first, the judge would yell at him for 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:24.879 a little while, then the prosecutor would yell at him 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.760 for a little while, and then you got to ask questions. 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.159 There was no real court reporting. The judge would just 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:33.399 yell to a guy in the corner whenever he wanted 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:37.560 something written down. I mean it is a whole another 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:41.760 level of you see how it goes so wrong, and 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:44.679 on top of it, you have this whole political process 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:48.120 going on. And it was interesting working on Matt's case 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:51.720 because I'd worked on Jason Perrocal's case in Nicaragua, and 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:55.960 the problem with Jason's case was we had no relationships 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:58.919 with Nicaragua, so we went to Congress and no one 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.280 would help us because we have such terrible relations The 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:05.359 problem with Matt's case is we had too many relationships 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:09.359 with Guitar. We're shipping troops through there to Afghanistan, we 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:12.880 have a military base there, and so getting assistance from 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.480 the US government was incredibly difficult. They just wanted to 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:20.080 kind of monitor the process and see how things went, 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.919 and so they'd show up in court, but they weren't interceding. 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:27.600 So you're managing the legal battle the political angle. What 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:30.800 about media? Is that helpful or hurtful in a place 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:31.240 like Qatar. 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:33.280 You know, I work a lot with people in Latin 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:37.240 America and I literally advised them, don't make a big 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:39.320 stink out of this case until we see if we 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:41.919 can get you out of here without going through the 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:45.360 political process or through the media process, because sometimes that 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:50.640 media process actually locks in their position because now it's 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:53.840 a global news story that these Americans are locked up. 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:57.160 And that is what happened in this case. It became 0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:59.919 a global news story. In court, we had the BBC 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:03.040 was there, La Monde was there. The New York Times 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:06.919 wrote multiple articles about this case, and it became a 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:08.120 political hot potato. 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:11.000 So the Gatari's probably fell back in a corner and 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:14.800 they forged ahead despite the gaping holes in their theory, 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:17.840 and it took three long months to get the charges 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.320 and then continued on from there. Now you had the 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:24.399 legal team from the US, but you'd have to have 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:28.879 some sort of local council assisting them, right, I can't 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:31.080 even imagine what you spent on attorneys. 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:32.760 No to ask me, I mean. 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:35.320