Manama: Kuwait’s Court of Appeals has upheld a four-year sentence against a blogger for deriding judges and misusing the telephone.
Four judges, including the president of the High Judiciary Council brought the case against Ahmad Fahdel, saying that he abused judges, made derogatory remarks against them and insulted them on the Twitter microblog.
The criminal court issued the four-year sentence against the blogger in October and he has been in jail for the past six months.
The Court of Appeals ruling was pronounced one day after the public prosecution extended by ten days the detention of bloggers held for posting comments abusive of the late Saudi king Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud on their Twitter accounts.
The public prosecution had ordered the arrests following a complaint by the interior ministry, reports in Kuwait said
The bloggers face the charge of engaging in an act of animosity against Saudi Arabia through abusing its rulers in a manner that may impact Kuwait’s political relations, the daily said.
However, the public prosecutor on Monday freed two bloggers on bail after questioning them along with others over accusations of insulting the Saudi King.
Mohammad Khaled Al Ajmi and Flaih Al Azemi, a journalist with a local Arabic daily were freed on a KD 1,000 bail each pending trial following their detention for their online remarks, deemed offensive.
No date has been yet set for their trial.
Kuwait had warned that it would apply a zero-tolerance policy towards insulting neighbouring countries and putting its diplomatic relations with them at risk.
A report in Kuwaiti daily Al Qabas said that 11 people had been arrested over their anti-King Abdullah tweets.
Citing a security source it did not name, the report said that foreigners were among those arrested.
It added that the Kuwaiti nationals would face legal action and that the foreigners would be deported.
King Abdullah died on January 23. Almost a decade after he assumed power on August 1, 2005.
