The ceremony commemorating the killing of Imad Moughniyah in Damascus last month has fuelled sectarian tension in Kuwait, where Shi’ite Muslims account for some 30 percent of nationals.
The cabinet has accused Moughniyah, a senior security leader in the Shia Muslim Hezbollah guerrilla group, of involvement in the hijacking of a Kuwait Airways plane in 1988 and the killing of two Kuwaiti passengers.
Several prominent Shias including former MP Nasser Sharkhouh and municipal council member Fadhel Safar are being interrogated by Kuwait’s public prosecution over the ceremony, which drew hundreds of people.
An arrest warrant has also been issued for prominent politician and former parliamentarian Abdul Mohsen Jamal.
Shia MP Sayyed Adnan Abdul-Samad, who may also face questioning, said Interior Minister Sheikh Jaber Khaled Al-Sabah was taking “arbitrary measures” against public figures.
He said in an interview that he may submit an official request to question the interior minister or the prime minister in parliament if the situation continued.
“They are continuing to arrest religious figures and former MPs… It is now a political issue… There are parties that are asking us to settle down but the measures being taken are contrary to this,” Abdul-Samad said.
Abdul-Samad said Shia condemned the 1988 airline hijacking, but added: “There isn’t anything official or governmental that links Moughniyah (to the hijacking)”.
Moughniyah had been wanted by the United States and Israel for his role in a string of kidnappings, hijackings and attacks against Western and Israeli targets that killed hundreds in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Al-Watan newspaper reported this week that Sheikh Jaber had threatened to deport expatriates who attended the memorial.
The minister and four lawyers also filed a law suit against Abdul-Samad and fellow Shia lawmaker Ahmad Lari last month for joining the so-called “Hezbollah Kuwait”, a group the government accuses of trying to destabilise Kuwait.
The Popular Action Bloc, a broadly Islamist parliamentary grouping to which both Abdul-Samad and Lari belonged, has already expelled them for participating in the memorial.
Abdul-Samad said all those being interrogated had been accused of joining “Hezbollah Kuwait”.
“The eulogising ceremony was the start… they transformed it to a bigger issue, which is (illegally) establishing a party,” he said. All political parties are banned in Kuwait.
Tension between Sunni and Shia Muslims has been on the rise in the Middle East since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 empowered Iraq’s Shia majority and increased the influence of Shia Iran.
