Kuwait allows police to wield stun guns to subdue wanted offenders
Specific cases for use include foiling offenders’ escape, breaking up rioters
Cairo: Kuwait has allowed police to use electric guns or stun guns to subdue wanted offenders, a security official has said.
The Kuwaiti Interior Ministry has allowed all field security personnel, mainly those in charge of public security and traffic police to use electric guns after attending special training courses on use rules, assistant undersecretary for public security sector Maj. Gen. Abdullah Al Rajib added.
The official specified situations in which a policeman is permitted to use electroshock weapons.
“The cases include arresting a convict in a criminal case, or in case of (the offender’s) resistance or escape attempt, or arresting an accused person against whom an arrest warrant has been issued if the wanted resists or attempts to escape,” he told Kuwaiti newspaper Al Anba.
Other cases, added the official, include breaking up a gathering of seven persons or more with the intention of committing a crime, putting public security in danger, or putting other lives at risk.
Several attacks on police
“The use of the electric gun is allowed if the crowd does not disperse willingly after they are warned and other ways are employed to disperse them.”
According to the official, stun guns are also allowed to use for breaking up rioters or to stop a terror act aboard a plane, in the case of self-defence, or to control persons gripped by fits of hysteria or anger posing dangers to them or others in a public or private place.
In recent years, Kuwait has seen several attacks on police.
Last September, a group of armed men attacked a police station in Kuwait and injured a cop.
A year earlier, a Kuwaiti motorist, who appeared to be behaving abnormally, abducted a policeman when he attempted to stop him.
In September, 2021, a Kuwaiti man was arrested after he had stabbed two policemen with a knife as they were trying to restrain him from attacking his parents in the town of Jaber Al Ahmad, west of Kuwait City.
In June of that year, a young Syrian man, fleeing after killing his mother, fatally stabbed a traffic policeman in the area of Al Mahboula in Kuwait’s governorate of Al Ahmadi.