Cairo: Former Kuwaiti lawmaker Walid Al Tabtabaie, convicted for storming parliament in 2011, returned home to attend his mother’s funeral, Kuwaiti media reported Saturday
He was one of eight MPs found guilty in the high-profile case and each was sentenced to 3-1/2 years in prison. He fled to Turkey where his mother died in a hospital while visiting him.
Al Tabtabaie, 55, said he had been informed by Kuwaiti authorities that on an order from Kuwait’s Emir Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmad he was permitted to return to the country to bury his mother.
Al Tabtabaie expressed appreciation for the gesture.
“I thank His Highness the Emir on his kind gesture of allowing me to attend the burial and receiving condolences for my mother. This is not uncharacteristic of His Highness,” he said following arrival in Kuwait.
Al Tabtabaie is the second ex-MP convicted in the case to return home in recent weeks. Last month, ex-lawmaker Fahd Al Khannah returned from Turkey to Kuwait where he later received the Emir’s pardon from imprisonment.
In 2011, dozens of opposition activists stormed the Kuwaiti legislature to demand the resignation of the country’s then prime minister over alleged corruption.
