Qatar detained 2 journalists who reported on poor working conditions ahead of the World Cup. Now it claims they were trespassing.

• Two journalists investigating working conditions in Qatar were detained for 32 hours on Sunday.
• Qatar said they were arrested for trespassing on private property.

Qatar detained two Norwegian journalists who were investigating poor working conditions in the country ahead of the 2022 World Cup, and later accused them of trespassing.

Qatari police arrested and put into custody Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani, who both work for Norway's NRK public broadcaster, as they traveled from their hotel to Doha airport on Sunday, NRK reported.

Hours earlier, the pair had broadcast a news segment on NRK's "Sportsrevyen" program in which Ekeland said some construction workers were "doing awfully," the VG newspaper reported.

"You can see in their eyes that they are not doing well. They work long days, and they work hard. And, of course, there are some workers that are doing fine," Ekeland said in the show, according to VG.

The pair were released on Tuesday morning after 32 hours in detention, but told NRK on their return to Norway that they were each questioned for eight hours, kept in a cell with 10 to 12 other people, and forced to sign a document in Arabic that they could not read.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Qatari Government Communications Office said the duo were arrested "for trespassing on private property and filming without a permit."

"The authorities arrested the crew after responding to a complaint made by the owner of the private property on which the crew had illegally accessed," it said.

Qatar won the bid to host the 2022 soccer World Cup in 2010, and rights groups have since slammed the country's treatment of construction workers, many of whom were working on stadiums for the tournament.

A report released last week by the International Labour Organization said that at least 50 workers have died and 500 have been severely injured in 2020.

"Most [injuries] were suffered by migrant workers from Bangladesh, India and Nepal, mainly in the construction industry," the report said.

Qatar's Ministry of Labour said subsequently that the number of migrant workers fatalities as reported in the press were "wildly misleading."

According to Human Rights Watch, many migrant workers in Qatar are denied basic rights and are effectively trapped in the country due to a system of sponsorship whereby a worker's legal status is tied to their employment.

"The system criminalizes 'absconding,' that is, leaving an employer without permission, for example, to change jobs. Migrant workers are also often subjected to the routine confiscation of their passports by employers and pay recruitment fees to secure jobs in the Gulf, which can keep them indebted for years," the group said in an August report.

In 2017, Qatar signed an agreement with the International Labour Organization in which it promised to tackle labor exploitation and "align its laws and practices with international labor standards."

In 2015, police in Qatar arrested a group of BBC journalists who were in the country investigating worker conditions. As with the case of the NRK reporters, Qatar said they were arrested for trespassing.