Dubai: A Qatari court released on Wednesday a US couple on trial for allegedly causing the death of their eight-year-old adopted daughter to sell her body parts, judicial sources said.
Matthew and Grace Huang are American citizens of Asian origin held in Qatar since January, when their daughter Gloria died in the Gulf nation, according to the “Free Matt and Grace” website.
The couple, who moved to Qatar in 2012, were at the hearing as seven of their friends appeared as witnesses and denied accusations they had starved Gloria to death, the judicial sources said.
The court of first instance in Doha ordered the release of the Huangs but imposed a travel ban on them.
The decision by Judge Abdullah Al Emady to free them from detention reversed his orders last month to keep them in custody during the trial. The couple was not required to post bail but cannot leave Qatar.
The ruling followed a string of defence witnesses who testified that eight-year-old Gloria appeared healthy and active just days before her death in January.
The “Free Matt and Grace” website says the daughter, who had been adopted from an orphanage in Ghana, died “suddenly” on January 15.
It says she had suffered from eating disorders which “likely were triggered by the extreme poverty she endured at an early age”.
The couple moved to Qatar from California in 2012, after Matthew Huang took a job on water projects related to infrastructure improvements for Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup in 2022.
The couple says the girl had various medical problems and also erratic eating habits, including periods of bingeing and self-starvation. They say she was not allowed from her room at night because of bizarre behaviour during eating sprees, including rummaging through garbage for food.
Officials in Qatar also have raised questions about the adoption procedures in Huangs’ case, including payments to an adoption agency.
An investigative report by Qatari police raised questions about why the Huangs would adopt children who did not share their “hereditary traits” and raised concerns that the children were part of a human trafficking operation or were “bought” for organ harvesting, according to the family’s website.
The Huangs reportedly have two other adopted African children who they sent back to stay with relatives in the United States.
The website says police accuse the couple of having adopted the children “in order to harvest their organs, or perhaps to perform medical experiments on them”.
The next hearing in the trial was set for December 3.
