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Downtown vigil planned for couple held in Qatar since daughter died

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Friends and family of a San Gabriel Valley couple confined in Qatar after the death of their adopted daughter will stage a candlelight vigil Thursday to bring attention to a case that has dragged on for 20 months.

Matt and Grace Huang, who live in Pasadena but traveled to Qatar to help the small country improve its infrastructure before the the 2022 FIFA World Cup games, were arrested, jailed and sentenced to three years in prison after the death of their daughter Gloria, one of their three adopted children.

The couple has appealed the sentence, but are prohibited from leaving the country in the meantime.

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Family members said they have invited friends and supporters, including the congregation of the Pasadena church the couple attended before going overseas, to help put pressure on government officials to intervene.

Organizers are calling for U.S. legislators to pay more attention to the couple’s case and asking the State Department to push for them to be allowed to travel home during a lengthy appeals process. There has been little -- if any -- political attention paid to the case.

The vigil is scheduled for 8 p.m. outside City Hall in Los Angeles.

“My sister and her husband did nothing wrong. They are innocent. They are victims,” said Daniel Chin, Grace Huang’s brother.

The couple, who met in high school and attended UC Irvine together, were initially accused of killing their daughter, who died after they rushed her to a hospital in Doha, the country’s capital.

The Huangs said their daughter, one of three special-needs children they adopted from Africa, died as a result of a profound eating disorder. But authorities — puzzlingly — concluded the couple were human traffickers who had planned to kill their daughter and sell her organs on the black market.

Qatar government officials tend to view adoption with suspicion.

Last spring, a judge sentenced the couple to three years in prison without explanation, and the Huangs learned weeks later that they had been convicted of child endangerment, not murder.

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The Huangs’ other two children, both boys, were allowed to leave the country and are now living in Washington with relatives.

Family members said the ordeal has been a “a never-ending nightmare” to the Huangs, who continue to home-school their sons during daily Skype chat sessions.

“She has this time to talk to the kids, which in a way is good, but essentially cruel,” Chin said. “You know how being apart can tear at a parent’s heart.”

Eric Volz, managing director of the David House Agency and a specialist in international crisis management who’s working with the Huangs, said the family has grave concerns about what will happen when the couple returns to court.

“We’re very worried about what they can invent the next time we return to court,” he said.

“This has gone on long enough,” he added.

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