Kuwait sentences writer for offending judges
KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait's criminal court has slapped a female writer working with Al-Watan with a three-month suspended jail term for writing an article deemed offensive to judges, the daily reported yesterday.
The court, which issued its ruling on Saturday, ordered the suspension of the jail term for three years but asked Aziza Al-Mufarrej to pay bail of KD 1,000 and pledge good conduct.
Mufarrej was convicted of writing an article in which she accused a judge of accepting a bribe to issue a verdict in favour of a businessman. Editor Sheikh Khalifa
Al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family, was also fined 520 dollars for allowing
publication of the article.
This is the first jail term ordered under Kuwait's new press law which was passed by parliament in March and was considered to be more liberal than the previous legislation. The verdict is not final as it must be confirmed by the appeals and supreme courts. The daily said its lawyer will appeal.
If Mufarrej is convicted of an offence during the three-year probation period, she would be required to serve the jail term immediately if the sentence was upheld by the higher courts. - AFP
The crime in this case as it's reported is of writing something negative about a judge. In a civilised society, if the alleged claim is baseless, then the reporter and newspaper would publicly apologise. If there is a crime, then the guilty party has been found out and the full weight of the law should swing into action. In this upside down world that is Kuwait, the investigative reporter is fined with the threat of imprisonment, and the alleged criminal doesn't get investigated (as far as we know).
Sad. We all know that corruption is pervasive in Kuwait, but whenever it is exposed it seems as though the law upholds the whistleblower as the criminal.
4 comments:
Mr negative
the writer was asked in the court about her article and she admitted that she heard it with no evidence or witness which is basically hearsay
I agree with you, even though the writer admitted her mistake still corruption is everywhere and proving it is not easy.
Thanks forzaq8 for clearing that up... she's either under pressure to say she made it up, or she's a bit silly to blurt something out in print jumping to conclusions.
Just as well we can't be fined for making stuff up blogging...
she could have been under pressure
but her topic are kinda simple , some would say her topics are like old lady speaking , and old ladies never needed evidence to badmouth anyone
i don't say what she said isn't ture , it can't be conformed but it can't be denied as well
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