Juwaihel had filed to grill the interior minister on April 24 over a variety of accusations that he failed to prove in one of the shortest grilling debates in the history of Kuwait on May 8. That grilling ended without any action or recommendations. This time, Juwaihel has attached a large number of classified documents to his grilling to prove his accusations. His grilling alleges that a large number of stateless Arabs, locally known as bedoons, worked in the Iraqi popular army during the Iraqi invasion between Aug 2, 1990 and Feb 26, 1991. Still, these people are still being considered as bedoons and treated as such, Juwaihel claimed. He attached names of a number of bedoons, copies of their original passports and their numbers and the forms they used to join Iraq’s popular army, claiming they pose a threat to Kuwait’s security.
The second issue in Juwaihel’s grilling is the claim that violations have been committed in the Kuwaiti citizenship by upgrading some people from seventh grade citizenship, granted to naturalized people, to first grade citizenship, given to Kuwaitis by birth. He also supplied a number of names for such people along with documents. In the third issue, Juwaihel claimed that the rules of the Kuwaiti citizenship were not implemented strictly on naturalized people.
According to Kuwaiti nationality rules, people who are granted Kuwaiti citizenship are required to drop their previous nationalities within three months or they lose the right to Kuwaiti citizenship. Juwaihel said that many people, including parents of some current MPs, have failed to abide by this rule and accordingly have violated the Kuwaiti law and must be penalized by withdrawing their citizenship. He said that the interior ministry has failed to apply the law on many people and provided a number of names of such people.
Regarding the fourth issue, Juwaihel claimed that the interior minister in the first grilling had provided false information and denied facts. In addition, the interior ministry’s committee that inspected papers of candidates for the National Assembly election did not perform its duties in a proper way. He said that MP Abdullah Al-Turaiji, for example, had been convicted in court in cases that should have prevented him from contesting the elections, but the interior ministry committee failed to bar him.
The grilling, to be listed on the agenda of June 19 session, is the seventh grilling to be submitted in the new Assembly which held its first session in mid-February. They included grillings of the prime minister, information minister, two of the interior minister, one against the former finance minister after dropping another and two against the minister of social affairs and labour.
The Assembly meanwhile approved two key reforms to the penal code by amending an article and scrapping another that MPs said the authorities have been misusing. In the first amendment, MPs overwhelmingly approved an article allowing people to challenge appeals court verdicts before the cassation (supreme) court in minor cases. Under the penal code, minor cases like small fines end at the court of appeals and they cannot be challenged before the court of cassation. The amendment allows people to go to the supreme court if they are convicted.
In the second and more important amendment, MPs scrapped article 15 in the penal code which states that people who spread false news about Kuwait that undermine the reputation of the country will be jailed for at least three years. This article was extensively used by authorities in arresting and sending to trial political activists although lawyers said the provision was massively misused. Islamist MP Waleed Al-Tabtabaei said the article is one of the characteristics of a “police state” that most world countries have scrapped, including Bahrain, while Kuwait has kept it. Islamist MP Mohammad Al-Dallal said the article is against freedoms and must be scrapped.
MPs also rejected a proposal by several MPs to debate the huge compensation awarded to the US Dow Chemical. The Assembly also rejected a request by the government that the concerned committee should immediately study and report to the Assembly two amendments to the sports law so the international ban on Kuwaiti sports can be lifted.
