Hi all - I'm new to this forum as well as a recent first-time flier on QR, so I'm not entirely sure if my problem is as bizarre and unusual as I suspect it is. (I have, however, flown several million air miles total, to 50+ countries, so I'm certainly no travel newbie.) As my header states, my laptop was confiscated a few days ago by Hamad security as I was entering the gate area for my DOH-LAX flight.

Here's the story: last month I bought a r/t ticket from LAX to SIN, with stopovers at DOH en route (this was during their big fare sale). My travel dates were three weeks apart. On my outbound flight I had a relatively brief (~2 hour) layover in Doha, but on the return I had an overnight layover. I requested, and received, a transit visa directly from QR so I could stay at an off-site hotel.

In the middle of my trip, my laptop inexplicably stopped working altogether -- and I do mean completely dead, even though it was only a few weeks old. (I'm assuming it had some sort of critical bug from its manufacturing that didn't become evident until it'd been used a while.) Anyway, on my return trip I spent the night at a Doha hotel, and returned to the airport fairly early to catch my 8am flight to LAX. I had tried checking in for my return flights on QR's smartphone app, but I kept getting an error message when I tried it, so I ended up just checking in at the airport counters at both SIN and DOH.

After check-in at DOH I noticed immediately that I had the dreaded SSSS symbol on my boarding pass; I assumed it meant the same thing it does stateside, that I'd have to go through an enhanced security check. This seemed slightly odd, given that I met none of the criteria that usually triggers an enhanced check (plus I had no idea such checks took place outside the US). I cleared immigration and the first x-ray check of my person and hand luggage, and made my way to the gate after a stopover in the business lounge.

Upon arrival the two security agents posted at its entry point began my enhanced search. They did the usual very firm patdown of my person and testing of my hand luggage inside and out for explosives residue. And then they asked me to open my laptop in my bag and turn it on. Their English-language skills weren't great, and when I said it "wasn't working" they initially thought I was saying it was merely out of power. After a couple of minutes I finally managed to explain that the laptop was literally not working, and not merely in need of a charge. This was when they summarily announced that I "simply could not board the aircraft" with the laptop, and that I could retrieve it from the airport's lost & found office next time I was in Doha. (If at this point you're thinking "WTH...?!?!?!?!", you know what I thought about that suggestion.)

Just to clarify a few matters: first, I'm a US citizen with no ties -- familial, business, or anything else -- to the Middle East, and I have never visited any of the "seven majority-Muslim countries" that were the subject of Trump's recent attempted travel ban. I'm Caucasian with wholly European ancestry, and no one in my family is married or otherwise related to anyone of Arab descent. My "record" is squeaky-clean enough that I had no problem securing a Global Entry card a couple of years ago. I've never previously had any sort of problem with immigration in any country, and out of hundreds of individual flights taken over the past 15 years, I'd only previously gotten the dreaded SSSS boarding-card symbol once.

I mention all of this because both the desk agent and gate agent said their computer systems were newly "synced" with the American TSA database, and claimed that TSA had initiated my enhanced search, not them. I find this story difficult to believe given my trusted-flier status with TSA, plus the only remotely unusual part of my trip was spending the night in Qatar -- a majority-Muslim country, yes, but obviously not one subjected to any ban, plus I had no choice but to spend the night there.

So: the chief security guy insisted my laptop had to stay, and he flat-out refused to even look at my Global Entry card or listen to anything I said about the ludicrousness of his actions. I can only assume Hamad's security personnel were either misinformed or never informed that not everyone with the SSSS symbol on their boarding pass is alike, and in reality they can range from people picked completely at random (which I think is what happened to me) to persons on the no-fly list. Worse, I had no time at all to challenge him much about it, since by the point they finished my enhanced inspection the airline was about to close the gate on my flight.

The gate agent, to her credit, was profusely apologetic about both the security guy's attitude as well as my laptop's confiscation, and she gave me a card with a reference number on it and told me to email their customer relations team about the situation as soon as I could. I did so almost immediately after arriving in L.A. -- I remembered that the AA lounge near my connecting flight's gate had PCs available for passenger use -- but received little more than a form letter in response.

Has ANYONE here ever had anything similar EVER happen at DOH or on QR? Or even heard of it happening to someone? The gate agent said something in passing about this confiscation business being a new "protocol" instigated "within the past month or two," so did I somehow get ensnared in the president's ridiculous "crackdown" on "bad dudes"? Btw I ended up DMing the main QR account on Twitter and received a much nicer response about looking into my laptop's whereabouts, but what on earth should I do if it's somehow disappeared? QR has already claimed they have no control over DOH security -- which I suppose is technically true, though it ignores the reality that both are state-owned entities that are clearly intertwined to a major extent -- so who would be held liable for DOH security's ludicrously overzealous actions?

ANY advice or suggestions would be very much appreciated. Again, this was my first trip on QR, and I'm largely unfamiliar with airline protocol in general in the Middle East, so I have no real idea how to proceed from this point.