KUWAIT CITY, 20 June 2004 — A criminal court yesterday convicted a prominent Islamist scholar of insulting Kuwait’s ruler and questioning his rights to make decisions related to the war in Iraq, and handed him a suspended sentence of two years in jail.
The court said Hamed Al-Ali will serve the two years if he breaks the law again within the next three years. He was also ordered to pay 1,000 dinars ($3,380) as a guarantee which will not be refunded if he breaks the law.
Ali, a former head of the hard-line Salaf Movement, was accused of challenging the emir’s constitutional rights and his status, and calling for demonstrations and meetings without obtaining a license, his lawyer Osama Al-Munawer said.
The charges were based on Ali’s fatwa, which stated that “any backing by a Muslim country of foreign troops in attacking another Muslim state contravenes Islamic teachings,” in reference to Kuwait’s support for the invasion of Iraq.
He was also accused of insulting friendly countries. Charges, however, did not include an accusation that he taught worshippers at a local mosque how to manufacture bombs.
Meanwhile, a key political reform in Kuwait failed to get off the ground again yesterday as parliament voted to delay a decision on a contentious bill to amend the electoral law. After last week’s session was thwarted by lawmakers’ bitter exchanges on the subject, the government sparked more chaos by supporting a motion to delay a decision on the amendment until the next legislative term in October.
The bill, described as the first step toward political reform in the emirate, calls for cutting the number of constituencies from the current 25 to 10 in a bid to clamp down on alleged irregularities in parliamentary elections.
