A Qatar court has sentenced a Saudi man in absentia to death for gunning down another man in the bathroom of a Doha mosque in 2014.

The verdict was issued in late November last year, but only recently came to light.

The killing stemmed from a feud between two tribes that had simmered for more than three decades, according to the court’s verdict, which was obtained by Doha News.

Several days after the murder, Saudi news website Hadth reported that the attacker was avenging the death of his brother, who was apparently killed in the late 1970s on the Saudi-Yemen border area.

The court verdict said the convicted man, Mubarak Ali Abdullah Al Dosari, entered Qatar from Saudi Arabia via the Abu Samra land border shortly after 11am on June 2, 2014.

He checked into a hotel before renting a white Toyota Camry from the airport and checking into a different hotel, according to the verdict.

It added that Al Dosari then spent more than a week following the victim and tracking his movements.

The court said this showed Al Dosari did not act spontaneously and planned the murder in advance:

“He committed his crime while calm, not under the influence of anger or impulsive reaction,” the verdict, handed down by presiding judge Abdullah Al Emadi, read.

Attack

On June 14, Al Dosari followed the victim to a mosque in Ain Khaled and attacked the other man after he went into the bathroom outside the prayer area, according to the court documents.

The file added that Al Dosari fired a revolver five times, striking the victim in the head and chest.

“The defendant did not care for the sanctity of human life … nor the sanctity of the mosque where he committed the crime,” the verdict stated.

Al Dosari is said to have then driven to another mosque in Qatar near a Woqod petrol station where he had parked his car.

He switched vehicles – leaving the revolver as well as ammunition and a Kalashnikov assault rifle in the rental Camry – before “recklessly” driving back to Saudi Arabia at speeds reaching 140km/h, the verdict stated.

The Camry was found by police three days later.

Al Dosari was charged in absentia with first-degree, premeditated intentional murder as well as firearm offenses related to the assault rifle.

During the trial, the court heard from the victim’s family members, a forensics doctor as well as officers from Qatar’s Criminal Investigation Department.

While the court sentenced the man to death by firing squad, it said he should be jailed until the victim’s nine underage children become adults and decide whether they want Al Dosari to be executed as a form of retribution or would prefer he serve a prison sentence and pay compensation to the victim’s family.

Al Dosari’s current whereabouts are not known.

Feud

The verdict contains few details about what led up to the attack, apart from citing a tribal feud between Al Dosari and the victim dating back more than 30 years.

It does, however, say that Al Dosari was “lauded and praised on the internet for his brave actions” once he returned home.

Several days after the killing, a poet using the pseudonym Faris al-Dabalin uploaded a video to YouTube, celebrating the killing, which has since been viewed nearly 2,000 times.

A separate video shows a man reading another poem praising Al Dosari in front of more than three dozen other men inside a majlis.

The 2014 Hadth website article said Al Dosari spent decades searching for the victim following the death of his brother and eventually tracked him down to Qatar.

The report said the 2014 murder had ended the feud, but that senior Qatar officials had placed a travel ban on some residents to prevent further killings.

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