An American couple accused in Qatar of starving their 8-year-old adopted African daughter to death were gratified a few months ago when a judge temporarily released them from prison after nearly a year, with orders to remain in the wealthy gulf emirate pending verdicts in a case that defense lawyers said was so flimsy it should be dismissed.

But the couple’s crisis, which generated widespread attention over what supporters have described as a mix of flawed justice and racism, appears to have worsened. The new element is an increasingly bitter legal dispute with the husband’s American employer, which has requested — now that he is out of prison — that he return to work or forfeit further pay and benefits.

In what the employer is calling a personnel issue and the husband, Matthew Huang, is calling an unrealistic demand that amounts to forced dismissal, he resigned last week. In an angry letter to the employer, MWH Global, an engineering company with extensive work in Qatar, Mr. Huang, 37, said he could not possibly return to work yet, and he provided new details about what he described as a life in Qatari legal limbo for himself and his wife, Grace, 36.

While technically no longer incarcerated, he wrote, they remain basically under house arrest in an unfriendly country, vilified in the Arab news media, with death penalties still looming should they be found guilty. A verdict date may be announced at a Feb. 5 hearing on their case in Doha, Qatar’s capital.