Kuwaiti court clears 3 expats of Daesh links

Cairo: A Kuwaiti court has acquitted three expatriates earlier charged with having links to the terrorist Daesh (ISIS) organisation and planning attacks against Shiites in the country.

The three Tunisian nationals were declared innocent by the Criminal Court.

In January last year, the Interior Ministry said it had dismantled a terrorist cell that was planning to attack Shiite places of worship in the country and referred the suspects to public prosecution.

The ministry’s Security Media Department said at the time that the Kuwaiti State Security Service had thwarted the three-member group’s plot after monitoring its movements.

The department added that three suspects of an Arab nationality had been arrested.

Last month, a Canadian national in Kuwait was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a separate case on charges of promoting Daesh ideology and defaming Arab leaders.

The defendant was charged with joining a banned group with the intention of spreading principles aimed at destroying the country’s basic system and calling for joining the group via social media, Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported.

The defendant, who is of Arab origin, was also accused of buying unregistered phone lines using his bank account and providing them to other people to use the Telegram app with the purpose of joining Daesh and communicating with its members, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Anba said.

In 2015, some 27 people were killed in the bombing of a mosque in Kuwait. The bombing claimed by Daesh was carried out by a suicide attacker during the congregation Friday prayers in Al Sadeq Mosque.

The terrorist attack was the first of its kind in Kuwait in more than two decades.

In 2023, an inmate convicted of involvement in the bombing attack was executed. He was charged with aiding the suicide bomber by driving the attacker to the mosque. Five other defendants were tried in absentia and sentenced to death. Eight others were sentenced to 15 years in prison each in the same case.