Note: This article has been corrected to reflect that the engineer works for the supplier, not Texas A&M.

A Qatar court has found a local supplier and one of its engineers responsible following the 2014 death of a lab technician at Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) in 2014.

Hassan Kamal Hussein was killed in an accidental lab explosion on campus two years ago.

According to prior court testimony, he had been alone in a third-floor petroleum engineering lab at TAMUQ when the explosion happened on May 28.

Hussein had been working with a piece of equipment that modeled the production of petrol from natural gas.

According to the prosecutor, this equipment had a mechanical fault that caused it to leak natural gas.

Verdict

The court agreed with this, and late last month fined Interventions, an Industrial Area-based company, QR20,000 for the liability.

It also ordered an Interventions engineer to pay QR10,000 for improperly attempting to fix the leak the day before the explosion.

Finally, both guilty parties were ordered to pay QR200,000 to Hussein’s family members in blood money.

At the time of his death, the Egyptian expat left behind a wife and four children, who were between six and 12 years old.

A few weeks after the incident, a campus fundraising campaign raised more than QR70,000 for the family.

Thoughts?