Court overturns decision to close Kuwaiti daily

Kuwait City: A criminal court has overturned its decision to close the daily Al Watan newspaper for a week, the publication's lawyer said on Sunday.

On December 3, the tribunal ordered the paper's closure after it insulted a liberal university teacher.

Attorney Rasheed Al Radaan said the tribunal also commuted on Saturday the suspended two-month jail terms handed to the daily's editor-in-chief and its Muslim fundamentalist writer to a fine of 50 dinars (US$170) each.

"We had appealed and we want acquittal because we are convinced there was no insult," said Al Watan"s defence lawyer.

Editor Shaikh Khalifa Ali Al Khalifa Al Sabah member of the Kuwaiti ruling family (a US ally) and the columnist, Ahmad Al Kose, received no subpoenas to attend the legal proceedings, said the attorney.

Al Kose wrote in June that the teacher, Ahmad Al Baghdadi, hated the Quran, Islam's holy book, and that "devils have taken him over, and nested in his heart".

He also wrote that liberals like Al Baghdadi would rather send their children to music lessons than to religious centres to memorise the Quran. Al Baghdadi, political science teacher at Kuwait University, is a strong critic of Muslim extremism.

Al Baghdadi was convicted in March of mocking Islam and sentenced to a suspended one-year jail term for a column in which he wrote that he will not send his son to state schools where "ignorant" teachers will tell him "how to disrespect women and non-Muslims".

He denied insulting Islam, saying he was only criticising the way it is taught. In protest, the university teacher briefly stopped writing his column for Al Siyassah daily but has resumed his biting commentary.

The Kuwait Journalist Association had said it favoured resolving opinion disputes on the pages of newspapers and not courts.