KUWAIT CITY: A Kuwaiti court has jailed three Arab supporters of the Islamic State jihadist group, in a first for the Gulf emirate, newspapers reported yesterday.
The court sentenced a Kuwaiti to 10 years in jail for urging support for the group and also for insulting Kuwait’s ruler in public.
An Egyptian and a Jordanian were handed four-year terms for helping him distribute pro-IS leaflets, local media reports said, quoting Thursday’s ruling.
The verdicts can be appealed but the men are in currently in prison. It was the first such Kuwaiti court ruling against supporters of IS, the target of US-led air strikes in Syria and neighbouring Iraq. Kuwaiti courts are examining two similar cases.
In September, police arrested several suspected IS members under the Gulf state’s commitment to the US-led coalition against the jihadists.
Dozens of Kuwaitis have fought alongside rebel groups in Syria battling President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and a number have been killed in the conflict.
Turkish court acquits dissident over 1998 blast
ANKARA: A Turkish court yesterday acquitted Turkish dissident sociologist Pinar Selek, who has taken refuge in France, over a 1998 explosion that killed seven people, the official Anatolia news agency reported.
The ruling — delivered by a high criminal court in Istanbul — came at a hearing on Selek’s retrial after a life sentence for her alleged involvement in the deadly explosion was overturned this year, according to Anatolia.
The 43-year-old Selek, known for her critical studies of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey and work with street children, was accused of bombing a spice market popular with tourists in Istanbul. Selek was arrested and jailed aged 27 on charges of involvement in the explosion after she refused to give police the names of rebels she had met during her research.AFP
