Appeals court quashes Al Duwaila’s acquittal of insulting the UAE during TV interview
Kuwaiti Islamist ex-MP Mubarak Al-Duwailah in Kuwait City, on July 3, 2002
Manama: Kuwait’s Court of Appeals has rejected a non-guilty verdict pronounced by a lower court in the case of a former lawmaker and sentenced him to two years in jail for insulting the UAE.
The court said that Mubarak Al Duwaila would have the sentence suspended pending the payment of a KD1,000 bail and his commitment to irreproachable behaviour for three years.
The charges levelled against Al Duwaila included insulting the UAE and putting Kuwait’s official relations with the UAE at risk of being severed. The insults were uttered by the former lawmaker during a televised interview in Kuwait City conducted in December 2014.
The former lawmaker denied the charges and told the court that he never insulted the UAE or its icons, claiming that he had referred to several matters during the interview.
He was acquitted by the criminal court in November last year, but the Court of Appeals turned the verdict down and on Tuesday issued its own ruling.
Al Duwaila, a leader in Kuwait’s Islamic Constitutional Movement, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, was last year sentenced in absentia by a court in the UAE to five years in prison for his derogatory remarks against the UAE and its leaders during the interview.
