Maggie Turner, who lives in St Clement, had waited six days for news of her son, Malcolm Bidali, since learning of his arrest last Friday.
Mr Bidali, a Kenyan national who has worked in Qatar since 2016 and written a blog about the conditions faced by migrant workers, was arrested on 4 May. However, there had been a lack of information about the circumstances of his arrest and whether he was safe.
On Thursday morning Mr Bidali called his mother, who has joint Kenyan and British citizenship and has lived in Jersey since 2000, and was able to reassure her about his welfare.
Mrs Turner said the ten-minute call followed the intervention of the Kenyan Ambassador in Qatar. She said her son was ‘OK’ and had not been hurt, was being fed and kept in solitary confinement, with a toilet and television in his room and access to a gym for one hour every day.
‘While it is wonderful to have heard from Malcolm, and to know he is all right, there is further work to do relating to several outstanding issues,’ she said.
The major concerns listed by Mrs Turner were that there had still been no information provided about where Mr Bidali was being held, the reasons for his arrest, the means of securing legal advice for him and what steps were necessary to secure his release.
The Qatari government was quoted in an Associated Press article earlier this week as stating that Mr Bidali had been ‘taken into custody and placed under investigation for violating Qatar’s security laws and regulations’. The news agency said the government had declined to offer any specific information.
