Four years ago, a fluorescent light bulb in a storage room shattered. So, too, did Grace O’s life.
That overheated bulb ignited a fire in a Doha mall, perhaps the finest shopping center in Qatar. The fire would kill 13 children. One was an Atlanta girl, just three months shy of 3: Zeinah, the daughter of O and Zaier Aouani.
“Four years have passed. I’m still dealing with the same hurt,” said O, an economics professor at Georgia State University. “Thirty-three months is too short a time to live.”
Since the fire, said O, she and Zeinah’s father have waged a fight for what they feel is justice denied. The owners of the nursery where Zeinah and 12 other children died are close to the Qatari royal family. They enjoy political clout, as well as the deference their status affords them, the couple believes.
In April, a Qatar judge ruled that five defendants once judged guilty in the deaths should go free.
“This,” O said recently, “is like a horror movie.”
But, unlike movies, theirs is a story that has no end — not yet, at least. They’ve filed suits in U.S. and Qatari courts, seeking damages for their daughter’s death.
The fire has been the topic of countless news articles and televised reports. What happened at the mall, say critics, could have been prevented with better safety procedures in place. It’s also prompted questions about the quality of Qatar’s judicial system: Did politically connected defendants get away with a criminal offense?
Covered in white sheets
Four years ago, Zaier Aouani was teaching in Qatar. His wife had taken time off from Georgia State to visit him. They enrolled Zeinah at Gympanzee, a daycare center at Villagio, a mall on the western edge of the Qatari Capitol of Doha. It was a high-end place with Ralph Lauren, Fendi, Versace and other luxury shops.
On May 28, 2012, a fire swept through the building. Zaier called his wife. The mall, he said, was burning. Their daughter was inside. O hustled to the shopping center.
There, she encountered a building with barred doors. O prowled the building’s perimeter, asking one firefighter after another: Were the children in Gympanzee safe? No one knew. The smoke grew thicker. The temperature nudged past 100. Finally, one firefighter pointed to a distant entrance, where people clustered. She ran.
The crowd — parents of other children, she learned — grew. They looked up. Firefighters emerged from a hole they’d cut in the roof.
“We saw them carrying people through the roof,” O said. “They were covered in white (sheets).”
Someone, O doesn’t know who, asked the people at the doorway to go a local hospital. There, O found her daughter’s body under a sheet.
The fire took the lives of 19 — the children, plus four teachers and two firefighters. Three victims were siblings, triplets. Qatar reacted with shock and horror. Government investigators issued a damning report.
Gympanzee, investigators learned, was not licensed as a nursery; children shouldn’t have been there. Rescue workers didn’t know about children trapped in the nursery until they’d been on the scene for a half-hour. Firefighters were too late to save the victims from fatal smoke inhalation. The mall’s design and safety features weren’t sufficient to contain a fire.
“A status of lack of adherence to required laws, systems, and measure by all concerned parties to different degree,” the report said. “This includes adherence to design, license, and safety conditions, which contributed to Villagio catastrophe.”
Judge never said ‘guilty’
The AJC contacted the Enbassy of Qatar in Washington, asking for comment about the fire and its aftermath. It got no response to several inquiries, but this much is known:
The Qatari government charged seven people in the fire and deaths. They included the nursery’s co-owners, Sheikh Ali Bin Jassim Al Thani — he’s Qatar’s ambassador to Belgium — and Iman Al-Kuwari, daughter of Qatar’s culture minister.
In June 2013, Qatar announced that five of the seven had been convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Two were acquitted. Four were sentenced to six years in prison. A fifth got five years.
Each defendant appealed. As one hearing followed another, Zeinah’s parents contacted federal officials. Could they express their anger, their sense of loss?
The federal government has kept close watch on the case, said William Cocks, a spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs. “Over the past four years, we have provided all possible consular assistance to the family, including attending the judicial hearings,” Cocks wrote in an email. “We have also engaged with the Qatari government at the highest levels to convey the family’s concerns.”
In October 2015 — more than three years after the fire — the Qatari Court of Appeal overturned the lower court’s convictions. The defendants were free.
A month after that ruling, Qatar’s attorney general appealed the verdict to the Court of Cassation, the highest court in the nation. In February of this year, it ordered a new trial.
That trial ended April 25 when a judge ruled each defendant would not serve prison time. Each, he decreed, had to pay the "blood money." That equates to about $55,000 for a young life exstinguished. In his ruling, the judge never said "guilty."
‘Nothing has happened’
Most fire victims’ families settled with Qatar for undisclosed sums. Zeinah’s parents did not.
They have filed suit in California, where one defendant is a Pasadena architectural firm that helped design the Doha mall. It alleges “numerous failures” that led to the deaths. Joining them in the case are others who lost children or other loved ones. It does not specify damages.
The two also filed suit in Qatar. It asks for damages totaling more than $68 million. In a 33-page brief, the suit alleges an array of zoning and safety failures that led to the death of 19, including one special 2-year-old “who was the source of all happiness and cheerfulness to them in this life.”
Zeinah was a cheerful child, recalled Keri Stoltz, who owns the Primrose School in Midtown Atlanta where the child was previously enrolled.
At first, said Stoltz, Zeinah didn’t want to be at school. She let everyone know it — at full volume. “We started to question whether this was a good fit for her.”
But the teachers persevered. So did Zeinah. One day, said Stoltz, the crying stopped. A bright smile spread across her face; from that point on, it never went away.
“She completely blossomed,” Stoltz said. “She was absolutely a bright star among the students.”
When they learned that star had gone out, teachers and students created a space to remember her forever. The Zeinah Aouani Library is a place where kids learn, where their parents linger.
Zeinah’s mother recently visited the library. She touched the photo and smiled.
“We expected some sort of justice would happen,” O said. “Nothing has happened.”
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