A group of Australian women are suing authorities in Qatar after they were strip-searched and examined at Doha airport.
In October 2020, the women were ordered off a flight and their privates were checked to know if they had given birth after a baby was found in a bin at Hamad Airport.
The women described their experience as state-sanctioned assault and the incident sparked widespread outrage on social media.
They were taken off the Qatar Airways plane by armed guards before being taken into ambulances on the tarmac where they were inspected by nurses.
The women said they did not consent to the examinations and were not given explanations for what was happening to them.
Qatar later apologised for the incident and one airport official was handed a suspended jail sentence but the women say their cases have since been ignored.
One of the women, who anonymously spoke to the BBC said she was “subjected to the most horrifically invasive physical exam”.
