IS woman sentenced to 10 years’ jail

KUWAIT CITY: A Kuwaiti court yesterday sentenced a Philippine woman to 10 years in jail after convicting her of joining the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group and plotting attacks.

The ruling, which is not final, also calls for deporting the 32-year old after serving her term.

The woman was arrested in August, two months after arriving in the oil-rich Gulf state to work as a domestic helper.

At the time, the interior ministry said she had confessed to being a member of the IS and was plotting terrorist attacks in the emirate.

The woman told interrogators that her husband was an active fighter with the IS in Libya and he had asked her to come to Kuwait from the Philippines as a domestic helper, according to the ministry.

An IS-affiliated group in the Philippines has conducted a string of bombings as well as kidnappings for ransom of foreign tourists and Christian missionaries in the country.

Kuwaiti courts have sentenced to various jail terms a number of members, sympathisers and financiers of the IS.

In October, Kuwait police arrested an Egyptian driver suspected of being a member of the IS, after he rammed a garbage truck into a pick-up carrying five US citizens.

Authorities in July said they had dismantled three IS cells plotting attacks, including a suicide bombing against a Shia mosque and against an interior ministry target.

An IS-linked suicide bomber killed 26 worshippers in June last year when he blew himself up in a mosque of Kuwait’s Shia minority, in the worst such attack in the Gulf state’s history.

Kuwait is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, it shares borders with Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

As of 2016, Kuwait has a population of 4.2 million people; 1.3 million are Kuwaitis and 2.9 million are expatriates.

Expatriates account for 70% of the population. In 1990, Kuwait was invaded by Iraq. The Iraqi occupation came to an end in 1991 after military intervention by coalition forces.