{"id":129743,"date":"2011-09-26T11:15:24","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T06:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=129743"},"modified":"2011-09-26T11:16:32","modified_gmt":"2011-09-26T06:16:32","slug":"kuwait-twitter-user-jailed-for-shiite-insult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/09\/26\/kuwait-twitter-user-jailed-for-shiite-insult.html","title":{"rendered":"Kuwait Twitter User Jailed for Shi&#8217;ite Insult"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Kuwaiti court on Sunday sentenced a Sunni Islamist activist to three months in jail for writing remarks on his Twitter account deemed derogatory to Shi&#8217;ite Muslims, a legal source said, <strong><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.news24.com\/SciTech\/News\/Twitter-user-jailed-for-Shiite-insult-20110925\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">News24 reports<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong>, citing AFP.<\/p>\n<p>Mubarak al-Bathali, who is serving another three-month jail term on a similar case, was arrested several weeks ago by the secret service police on charges of undermining national unity and disparaging Shi&#8217;ites.<\/p>\n<p>The sentence is not final as it can still be challenged in the appeals and supreme courts, but Bathali has to remain in jail until his appeals are examined.<\/p>\n<p>The same Kuwaiti court is due to issue a verdict on Tuesday against a Kuwaiti Shi&#8217;ite blogger for allegedly using his Twitter account to harshly insult the rulers of Kuwait&#8217;s Gulf partners Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.<\/p>\n<p>Nasser Abul, 26, was arrested more than three and a half months ago and tried on charges of undermining national interests and risking severing Kuwait&#8217;s relations with &#8220;brotherly countries&#8221;.<br \/>\nHe has denied the charges saying a hacker had written the offensive remarks on his Twitter account and that he had deleted them as soon as he saw them.<\/p>\n<p>Kuwait Society for Human Rights and Amnesty International has called for Abul to be freed, with the latter saying it believes he is a &#8220;prisoner of conscience detained for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Several Kuwaiti MPs have strongly criticized what they described as a government crackdown on bloggers and users of social networks Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several Kuwaiti MPs have strongly criticized what they described as a government crackdown on bloggers and users of social&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":129712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[16333,32487,32489,32488,12612],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}