Ten years for tweets: Kuwaiti man gets jail sentence for ‘blasphemous’ posts

Published time: June 04, 2012 23:51
Edited time: June 05, 2012 04:12
Reuters/Alex Domanski

A Kuwaiti blogger has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for sending tweets deemed blasphemous. The man argued his account had been hacked and his defense says it will appeal the court’s ruling.

­A lower Kuwaiti court ruled that 22-year-old Twitter enthusiast Hamad al-Naqi was guilty of insulting the Prophet Mohammed, as well as his wife Aisha and his companions, the man’s lawyer said.

Al-Naqi was also charged with defaming the Saudi and Bahraini governments and with spreading false news said to undermine Kuwait’s image abroad.

We plan to challenge the ruling against my client Hamad al-Naqi in the appeals court and we are very optimistic that the higher court will cancel the sentence,” defense lawyer Khaled Shatti explained.

The charges were based on a number of Tweets made from his account. Al-Naqi has been telling his interrogators that his Twitter account had been hacked into.

Al-Naqi was arrested three months ago and has been behind bars or in interrogation chambers ever since.

His case also highlights growing tensions between the country’s Sunni majority and Shiite minority. Al-Naqi is Shiite, while the ruling Al-Sabah dynasty is Sunni.

Kuwaiti courts had earlier issued jail terms against bloggers and online activists amid sectarian tensions between the two groups.

The country’s parliament, controlled by Islamists and conservatives, has also passed a bill stipulating the death penalty for grave religious offenses. The bill is yet to be implemented.

Comments (8)

F.S (unregistered) 06.06.2012 09:05

Woooow, just for tweeting they ruined the best years of his life...and Kuwait pretends to be peaceful...What can this man do...from 22 to 32 he havent done anything...except being with drugdealers and criminals for TWEETING!!!

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Peter Jennings (unregistered) 05.06.2012 21:11

Dear @Duncan Lucas, thanks for your comment, they are welcome.

You are correct and a lot of stuff just hasn't survived the years. There was also the wanton destruction of the libraries at Alexandria and such like that must have seen alot of ancient material destroyed for ever. However, if they can unearth things such as the Dead Sea Scrolls then it is possible that stuff from that era could survive, but we're not seeing it, anywhere, ever. Jesus was not the simple carpenter the catholic religion punts to their people so he must have left some physical evidence behind.

I meant no disrespect to Mohammed, by the way. It's just that I personally do not believe anything another human tells me to be the truth, until I can verify it myself.

These same humans have tended to get hot under the collar(so-to-speak) and start to use fear, threats & force to ensure you eventually fall in line with their teachings. When that happens, and it has numerous times through the centuries, then an alterior motive is obvious and their quest has nothing to do with expanding the peaceful teachings of a wise man and everything to do with expanding a business.
Regards

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Dmidify (unregistered) 05.06.2012 20:12

Wow.. arresting someone over Dogma... Nicely done Kuwait. Let your people live and express themselves you over controlling freaks.

+2

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