The Kuwait Times
written by AFP staff
Thursday May 31, 2012
KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait’s court of appeals yesterday reduced a seven-year jail term for a Sunni tweeter to six months in prison for allegedly insulting the faith of the Shiite minority, his lawyer said. “The (appeals) court reduced Mohammad Al-Mulaifi’s jail term to just six months,” Fahad Al-Braikan said. The case will now go to the Supreme Court for a final decision, he said. The jail term was reduced after the court acquitted Al-Mulaifi, a writer, of the charges of spreading false news about the Gulf state and promoting an illegal clandestine group, according to the court ruling.
He was convicted only on the count of disparaging the Shiite faith in an Internet article which he posted on his Twitter account in February. Al-Mulaifi, a Ministry of Islamic Affairs employee and a widower with four children, categorically denied all the charges and insisted that he did not mean to insult any faith. Kuwaiti Shiites comprise around a third of the native population of 1.18 million. They staged a rally in protest of the article and demanded that authorities take action.
Sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in the Gulf state have increased rapidly in the past several months, reflecting regional tension over Bahrain and Syria. Over the past few months, Kuwaiti courts have clamped down on Sunni and Shiite activists accused of committing religious offences, sentencing several of them to various jail terms. Several others are currently on trial.
Earlier this month, Kuwait’s appeals court upheld a 10-year jail term on tweeter Orance Al-Rasheedi for insulting the Gulf state’s ruler and calling for the overthrow of the regime. The lower court is scheduled to issue a verdict on Monday in the case against Shiite tweeter Mohammad Al-Naqi, who is charged with insulting Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him), his wife Aisha and some of his revered companions.
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