Bedoon jailed five years for insulting Amir Activists detained
KUWAIT: The criminal court yesterday sentenced stateless activist Abdullah Atallah Al-Enezi to five years in jail with immediate implementation to be followed by deportation. The sentence was issued in absentia because the defendant did not appear in court. Enezi was arrested about a year ago at a demonstration of hundreds of stateless people, or bedoons, demanding their rights including the right to Kuwaiti citizenship. He was detained for around three months before a judge freed him on KD 500 bail.
Enezi was supposed to appear in court for his trial but he didn’t show up. His defense team pointed out that it appears he had fled Kuwait to a Western country, probably Canada, where he has sought political asylum. The sentence can be challenged only after Enezi arrives in Kuwait. The criminal court also acquitted 36 bedoons from charges of taking part in an unlicensed gathering in Jahra and for assaulting police. The defendants had denied the charges.
But a lower court on Thursday sentenced six stateless men to one year in jail to be followed by deportation for allegedly taking part in an unlicensed gathering and assaulting police. The court asked five of them to pay each KD 200 to suspend the jail term, but refused to extend the exemption to the sixth defendant, leading stateless rights activist Abdulhakim Al-Fadhli.
Dozens of bedouns are facing similar charges following their arrest during protests in the past three years. There are around 110,000 bedoons in Kuwait who claim the right to Kuwaiti citizenship but the government insists that only 34,000 of them qualify for consideration for citizenship.
In a related development, the court yesterday remanded two online activists to 10 days imprisonment each pending investigation and trial on charges of insulting late Saudi King Abdullah, who died about 10 days ago. The two activists were arrested after writing comments on Twitter deemed offensive to the late Saudi monarch. A third activist was detained at the state security department for the fourth day pending further investigation on similar charges. Activists have said that more arrest warrants have been issued against others. Meanwhile, the National Assembly’s financial and economic affairs committee is expected to vote to approve the government’s five-year development plan for the next five years which envisages spending of KD 45 billion, head of the committee said. MP Faisal Al-Shaye said the committee yesterday discussed with government representatives the outline of the 2015/16-2019/20 development plan and the large number of projects proposed during the period.
He said the committee is scheduled to vote and approve the plan at its meeting on Wednesday, adding that the plan proposes hundreds of projects, some of them mega projects, at a cost of over KD 45 billion. Some of the projects in the plan were in the previous development plan which was strongly criticized for the low percentage of implementation.