KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait’s lower court yesterday sentenced opposition tweeter Hamed Al Khaledi to two years in jail on charges of insulting the state’s ruler, a rights activist said.
“Khaledi has been sentenced to two years in jail with immediate effect,” the director of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights, Mohammad Al Humaidi, said on his Twitter account.
Khaledi was charged with writing remarks on his Twitter account deemed offensive to Emir H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah. The verdict is not final, but his jailing was immediate pending the appeals process.
His lawyer Jasser Al Jadaei said he will file an appeal later on Sunday against the verdict and seek an early hearing.
Attacks on Iraq security forces kill 3
BAGHDAD: Attacks mostly targeting security forces in and around Baghdad and in northern Iraq, one of them a suicide bombing, killed three people yesterday, the latest in a spike in unrest ahead of elections.
The suicide bomber blew up a car at a military checkpoint in Abu Ghraib, just west of the capital, killing one person and wounding seven, including at least three soldiers, a security official and a medical source said.
And on the capital’s northern outskirts, a magnetic “sticky bomb” attached to a car detonated near a checkpoint, killing the vehicle’s driver.
Five shootings and bombings in Kirkuk and Mosul, both northern cities, killed one person and wounded six. All of the injured were policemen or soldiers.
Thousands stage protest in Rabat
RABAT: Thousands of people marched through the Moroccan capital yesterday to protest against unemployment and the cost of living, ahead of plans by the Islamist-led government to push for social and economic reforms.
Protesters marched for “our rights and freedoms” in an action called by two trade unions, chanting slogans against government policies, corruption and the high cost of living, a photographer said.
“Morocco is witnessing social regression,” chanted protesters, including activists from the February 20 pro-reform movement, which was born of the Arab Spring protests sweeping the region in 2011.
Oman Air to launch budget airline
MUSCAT: State-owned Oman Air, the sultanate’s national carrier, plans to launch a budget airline to handle regional and domestic flights as a measure to expand its business, Chairman Darwish Ismail Al Balushi said yesterday.
“We are working hard on a feasibility study for the low-cost airline and expect to get government approval soon after,” Balushi said, without elaborating on the plan.
Oman Air said its revenues jumped 21 percent to RO347m ($901m) in 2012 on the back of rising traffic through the country’s main airport. The carrier’s operating loss narrowed 11 percent to RO97.5m last year.
“The loss is mainly attributed to the purchase of new aircraft because we have recently increased our destinations,” said Balushi, who is also the minister of finance.
Agencies
