The Abu Dhabi Misdemeanor Court, at its session yesterday, looked into five cases accused of insulting and slandering religious preacher Wassim Youssef on social media, and the court decided to reserve cases for judgment in the third session of next March.
During the session, four accused attended, the fifth was absent due to satisfactory conditions, and his defense presented a medical report on his case to the court, and all the defendants present denied the charges against them, and demanded not to accept the cases and judge their innocence, and reject civil suits.
In detail, the defense of the five defendants was unanimous in the absence of previous knowledge between the accused and the complainant, and that their tweets on the social networking site “Twitter” were in response to what he says in the media, and his skepticism about Sahih Al-Bukhari and his talk about some of the companions and followers, in the context of freedom of opinion , And stemmed from their zeal for their religion.
Lawyers argued that the case was not available for several reasons, including the complainant submitting the report after the legal period of three months, and the right to legal criticism, exemption from punishment for the goodwill of the accused, and the absence of the material and moral pillars of the crime, in addition to that the communications were opened without anyone Adjective, since the agency granted to the complainant’s lawyer does not give her the right to open a complaint.
They pointed out that thousands of accounts on social media from inside and outside the UAE addressed the complainant's ideas, but the latter chose these defendants to sue them due to their social status, stressing that the defendants pushed their love and jealousy of their religion and country to respond to the complainant, and their tweets did not include any abuse of his person, rather they were Directed to his ideas, which is permitted by the law, especially since the complainant has a media platform that explains and promotes his ideas, unlike them. There is no way for them except social media, and they also enclose in their notes of their defense a discharge of a memory card (flash) that includes the complainant's statements that prompted the accused Respond to it through the social networking site «Twitter».
The preacher Yusef was attacked on social media because of his talk about "Sahih Al-Bukhari", and Youssef said in a tweet last June through his official page on "Twitter", that 163 accounts on "Twitter" will be referred to the Public Prosecution, indicating that he worked on Collect tweets issued by these accounts.