Media activist quits Qatar

Robert Menard, a French activist who founded the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, said on Wednesday that he was quitting Qatar after a long-running dispute over press freedoms.

Mr Menard, who previously ran the Paris-based Reporters Without Frontiers, said that he had been invited into the country by the emir’s senior wife Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missned but had been impeded by senior officials since that time.

Mr Menard had protested at Qatar’s refusal to reform repressive press laws and at the authorities’ refusal to give visas to Iranian and other journalists whom he said were at risk of persecution.